The Hollow Star
by Super Chocolate Bear
Summary: Revisiting New Earth, the Doctor meets Diane Holmes, misplaced in time and imprisoned on a research ship. Those in power are convinced she is the key to a secret hidden inside the sun; a deadly power thousands of years in the making...
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

(A/N: Set between 'The Next Doctor' and 'Planet of the Dead,' SO CONSIDERED YOURSELF SPOILER WARNED.)

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Prologue**_

Kevin's boots clomped noisily against the marble floors. Well, simulated marble anyway. Genuine marble was more of a collector's item now; affordable only for the rich and flighty. Which, of course, Mr Icarus was, so why he didn't have actual marble was beyond Kevin.

_Then again…_

He swiped a hand on the sensor beside the towering doors, which opened compliantly. Stepping through onto the multi-level and lavish bridge, Kevin considered that Mr Icarus probably thought genuine marble was beneath him. His ancestor's attempts at 'improving' the hospital system on New Earth generations ago seemed a testament to that.

And, moving swiftly from questionable nursing to scientific discoveries, only one thing was on the good Mr Icarus' mind, and it was blazing brightly in front of the _Phoenix _(an old Earth pop-culture reference apparently - Kevin didn't really see the significance in a fictional woman who was part of a group of 'mutants', but to each his own). The full strength of the solar rays was blocked by several incredibly thick and dense shields, each one becoming thinner as they extended out towards the star.

The Hollow Star.

"_Curious name." _

That was all Mr Icarus' representatives had said initially. Until Kevin notified them of it's potential. Of course, when he said 'potential', it was somewhat of a stretch. There wasn't much in there that would interest Mr Icarus once they found a way inside. But Kevin _needed _the Hollow Star. So much depended on it.

And he was the only one who could make it happen. That was what he kept telling himself. It was what kept him sane in these… distasteful circumstances.

"_Phoenix, this is Shuttle Fetch-Two-Bronze, do you read?"_

A young woman at the front answered the call. She was a New Human, if Kevin recalled correctly. Fourth or fifth generation since their inception. Although how they were actually cured, no-one knew. Only the Face of Boe had professed to have any kind of knowledge, but that was only hints and chuckled comments, as though everyone were foolish for asking.

And now he had a statue. A statue devoted to a giant head. Humans. Very strange.

Kevin continually had to remind himself to keep such comments to himself and firmly within his own head. This _was _a human body after all. It wouldn't do for him to start giving anyone a reason to think he was anything else.

His attention was brought back to the shuttle that was very slowly edging it's way into the corona of the star.

"_There's a slight fluctuation in levels five and six. It was fine for the entire journey up here, but as soon as we got close to the star-"_

Kevin walked quickly to the young woman and jabbed a finger onto the communication button. "Shuttle Fetch-Two-Bronze, this is Professor Mal. Your worriers are groundless, the shields will hold."

"_But the readings-"_

"Are a result of interference from the unusual radiation of the star, that's all." He softened his voice a little, and hated himself for doing it. "The shields _will _hold."

There was a few moments of static filled silence. _"Understood."_

Catkind seemed to have an irrational fear of humans. Kevin believed it came down to the hospital incident so very long ago, and just evolved from there. Tensions between Catkind and humans only become worse when that pilot Cat became the Duke of Manhattan. Ridiculous story, but there it was. But things _seemed _to be dying down.

Kevin doubted that what was about to happen would help matters at all.

The shuttle slowly turned and headed towards the planet, the Catkind pilots updating them on their progress the closer they got. Eventually, static began to intercede, making them almost inaudible through the vicious crackling.

The screams, however, came through loud and clear.

"_There's something pulling us in! We can't pull up! Shields are failing, please advise! Repeat, shields-"_

The relatively small explosion on the surface of the sun cut through Kevin like a finely honed assassin's blade. Face a stony blank, he stood to his full height and tugged down on his tunic.

"Frequency 66.2 is a failure. Could you log it in and prepare for another test?"

None of the crew even hesitated or looked the least bit disturbed by what had just occurred. Mr Icarus had taught them well.

But Kevin had none of their ability to nonchalantly dismiss such death. That wasn't the first shuttle to be destroyed in such a way, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

And yet, each time, Kevin always prayed that it would be. No-one deserved to die in such a careless manner. Except for a worthy cause.

As he wandered back to his quarters, Kevin wondered if he would truly feel justified when he reached the Hollow Star. But he had come too far now.

And so much depended on him.


	2. So, How Have You Been?

-1Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Chapter One: So, How Have You Been?**_

Warm lighting from above kept her comfortable. Lavish furniture and magnificent food tried to fool her into thinking she was anything but a prisoner.

But that's exactly what she was. No other name for it. And if there was anything she hated, it was being imprisoned. She had felt it before. Perhaps not in the traditional sense of four walls and metal bars, but she had been trapped by circumstances and the very world around her. Stifling her, keeping her grounded.

She used to hate that word. _Grounded. _Other women would use that term to describe men as though it were an admirable quality. Grounded meant stuck. Bound to the earth, unable to fly. Freedom. What a strange concept it was. Her whole life she had been searching for it, wondering with each new development if she had finally attained it or not.

Leaving her parents at 16. Escaping the country.

Taking flight…

A wistful smile crossed her lips. How she ached to fly again. But even there she began to find herself feeling trapped. Eventually, she knew she would have to land for fuel, or to drop off whatever cargo she had been using as an excuse to fly.

Of course, that one day had changed everything. At first, she thought it meant more freedom. But the man she met…

Once more, she had felt trapped. Bound to a place by her own feelings. And that's why she had to run, fly away. To have to live with those emotions… the intoxicating, tempting power of them. She knew. She knew that if she didn't leave, she would have stayed forever. And she would have been happy.

Far too frightening a thought to live with. So she took to the skies.

And exploded back into the world in a place far more alien, far more frightening. Nothing thus far had dissuaded her from this opinion. They thought she knew something. And as far as she knew, the need for that information was keeping her alive. She had no idea what would happen when they eventually found out she was telling the truth about her ignorance. Maybe they would let her go with a smile and a pat on the back.

But from what she had ascertained about aliens from the man she had left behind… somehow she doubted it.

So she would wait. She would wait until freedom came again, and she would fly away.

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New New York. Or New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York, depending on who you asked. Since the highways had been opened up by the Face of Boe fifty years ago (and some physician, apparently, but most people but that down to the ramblings of the Catkind nurse that waited hand on foot on Boe for years), the city had once more become the hub of life and activity on New Earth.

Of course, since the planet-wide quarantine had been lifted, _every _city had become a hub of life and activity. Naturally, there were still the odd black market vendors trying to pass off decades old 'Mood Patches', but very few were buying. And the sellers were slowly and surely being tracked down and apprehended.

None of which would have happened, of course, without the strong, powerful and dynamic leadership of his Lordship Brannigan, the first Catkind Duke of Manhattan.

At the base of the powerfully posed holo-statue depicting said Duke, a fairly innocent looking man stood, leaning against an old fashioned oak tree.

The Doctor grinned. He never thought the old cat would have had it in him. The Duke of Manhattan. Brilliant. Maybe some of his kids were still around. He hadn't seen any human/Catkind hybrids during his visits to this time period. Of course, that was only two or three times, but still… he thought he would have seen one at some point. Maybe they just ended up looking like Catkind. Wouldn't surprise him.

Pushing off from the tree, the Doctor strolled casually into the park, enjoying the perfectly maintained and monitored temperature. Warm enough to be comforting, but cool enough to allow him to wear his big coat. He loved his big coat. Coats. It was something that had stayed constant, every time he regenerated. Sometimes he wondered where he would be without his big coat. His mysterious allure would certainly lessen somewhat. Girls love men in big coats.

He was basing that on nothing whatsoever, of course, since he met his past few companions _not _wearing his big coat. Interesting, that. Maybe they were lured in by his non-big-coat-ness, and by the time he put it on and they realised he looked a little barmy, it was too late to back out.

Wow, Jackson Lake had been right. He really _did _ramble sometimes. Even in his own head. Was that a sign of senility in Time Lords? If he was honest with himself, he wasn't sure if he had ever even _heard _of a case of senility in Time Lords, let alone seen it. Would the Master count? Probably not, considering he was certifiable when he was _young._

Rambling _was _easy, though. The speed at which his synapses fired off in every conceivable direction took care of that. And really, he would rather be stretching his brain to every subject imaginable at the same time than concentrating all of his brain power on… other things. After all, other things were painful, and they just kept on happening, so it was best not to think about them.

But how he missed the other things. They were brilliant, all of them. Shining so bright…

He blinked away the mist in his eyes and looked around self-consciously. He needn't have bothered. No-one in the park had even acknowledged his presence. They wouldn't be interested if he blubbered like a baby and adopted the foetal position on the spot.

Well, maybe they'd be a _little _interested, but only in that 21st century British way where they stare at something unpleasant but bypass it out of stiff-upper-lip-ness.

The Doctor didn't feel like crying anyway. He wasn't a crying person. At least, he hadn't been until he met Rose. Damn that girl, coming along when she did. Picking up bright, beautiful, fantastic people was _not _a good idea when one was still recovering from flashbacks to the Time War. She had fixed him and made him weaker all at the same time. He held no doubt that the result of his most recent regeneration had been dependent on her involvement in his life.

Oh. _Now _he felt like crying. Sucking in a big gulp of air, the Doctor forged on ahead, making a beeline for an information terminal beside a glorious fountain sculpture. Water trickled down from tier to tier, sparkling in the sunlight.

He smiled lightly, gazing into the water before tapping a finger lightly on the terminal.

A holographic Brannigan emerged to greet him, and the Doctor's small smile erupted into a grin. He was dressed in his old pilot uniform, just like his statue before it. Somehow the Doctor couldn't see Brannigan consenting to the grand robes the last Duke of Manhattan had worn.

"_Hello there," _Brannigan's bodiless torso enthused. He looked quite eerie, holo technology having evolved to the point where they looked completely real. _"How can I help you today, fine sir or madam?"_

"Yes, hello," the Doctor enthused right back. "I was wondering if you could tell me what's happened in the last fifty years or so?"

Brannigan stared at him, and flickered momentarily. Then, he smiled. _"Now, that's a bit general, sir. Could I ask you to narrow your parameters?"_

"Oh, but…" He frowned, huffing like a spoilt child. "Couldn't you just show it to me in text? I can read _very _fast, you know."

His host paused again. _"I'm sorry sir, I really must ask you to narrow those parameters."_

Blowing out a frustrated breath, the Doctor sighed. "Oh, all right. What's happened to the motorway recently?"

"_The motorway is cut off to the general public for their own safety."_

"Really? What for?"

"_A cave-in twenty three miles from the New New Jersey entrance has made the area unsafe."_

He could feel his forehead wrinkling into a concerned frown. "What kind of cave-in? What caused it?"

Brannigan paused for the slightest of moments. Not by much, but still noticeable. Well, to the Doctor, anyway.

"_The cause of the cave-in is still being investigated by the proper authorities."_

"Right…" the Time Lord murmured, nodding as he looked around. "So, sorry, I'm a bit thick - must have banged my head during a cave-in - what happened to the Macra that lived down there?"

This time, the hologram's pause was far more overt. If it could have, the Doctor was certain it would have scowled. _"Please could you narrow your parameters, sir."_

"Um… Macra."

Brannigan's cheery smile returned. _"Ah, the Macra. Lived in the motorway fifty years ago."_

"Right, yeah, them. So what happened to them after the motorway was opened up?"

"_They left."_

The Doctor waited for more, but got nothing. "That's it? 'They left'?"

"_That they did, sir."_

"Where did they go?"

"_To their home, sir. Flying out to the stars there are, right now."_

"Oh." Thinking about it, the Doctor realised that he didn't know where the Macra home-world was. Of course, he'd only met them twice in his life, and the first time he hadn't stopped to ask questions. They were enslaving an entire human colony, after all. Blimey, that was _lifetimes _ago. Literally.

He shrugged. "All right, then."

A chime rang through the air before he could open his mouth, and the Doctor turned around on the spot with hands in his pockets, searching for the source of the noise. Nothing was forthcoming, so the Doctor returned to Brannigan.

"What was that about, then?"

"_I'm going to have to ask you to narrow your-"_

"Parameters, yeah, yeah. Right, um… is there anything particularly special happening today? Party? Parade? Oh, will there be cake? I haven't had cake in ages. I love cake. Do they have cake in this time period? I'm sure they must do. Cake's lovely. Can't get rid of cake."

Without pause, Brannigan spoke. _"Yes. No. No. No. Yes."_

The Doctor frowned for a moment before realising he asked about four questions in a row. Poor hologram didn't know which way was up.

"Sorry about that, got a bit carried away. Happens a lot to me. Far too much, actually… Anyway," he said decisively, waving his hand around. "What's the special occasion today?"

"_It is the 32nd voyage of the Icarus Foundation shuttle, taking visitors across the solar system to see the Hollow Star."_

Amazing. He could literally feel his ears perking up. "Ooo. 'Hollow Star'? What's that?"

Brannigan suddenly became cheery again, and the Doctor couldn't help but wish the hologram was always like this. It reminded him of the real man. Um, cat.

"_The Hollow Star is one of the natural wonders of this sector of space. Or is it a natural wonder? That's the question that's plagued scientists for nearly a decade now. Nine years ago, a human scientist by the name of Kevin Mal discovered that there was something particularly strange about the star this planet orbited. So strange that, four months ago, he managed to get the approval - and financial support, of course - of Mr Icarus himself to seek out and discover the secrets of this beautiful feat of engineering."_

"Why is it called the Hollow Star?"

Brannigan looked incredibly pleased with his question, as though he loved telling the story. _"Because it's not made up of the usual gases. Oh no, this is something quite different. There appears to be a solid entity making up the centre of the star, something with enough energy to reproduce the heat and effects of a true, proper sun."_

"And they're trying to find a way inside?"

"_Right you are, sir."_

The Doctor nodded, that familiar excitement welling up inside him. It was time to get involved in something again. Maybe he would just be able to witness the birth of a great scientific discovery. That would be nice. To be able to witness an event without having to be a part of it. He hadn't been able to do that for years. Last time was probably with Donna when they went to see the Magna Carta being drawn up. Of course, Donna _did _try to sneak her own signature on there, but the Doctor managed to divert her before irreparable damage was done to time, space and the universe in general.

A Donna sized ache stifled his excitement somewhat, so he concentrated on the perfectly simulated Catkind floating in front of him.

"Would I be able to get on board that shuttle, by any chance?"

"_You know what?"_

A small circular device popped out of the control panel.It reminded the Doctor of the dimension jumpers Pete's World had used. When he picked it up, a holographic map popped out, a red arrow indicating the launch site.

"_If you hurry, you just might make it."_

The Doctor grinned. "Too right. Cheers, Brannigan." And with that, he shot off out of the park, the route in hand.

It took him a few moments to get to the transport, which looked just about ready to close up the ramps leading to the doors. The Doctor bounded up, his trainers pounding noisily on the gantry. It reminded him of the sound of the TARDIS floor. Well, a little.

"Wait, wait!" The Doctor came to a halt before a Catkind flight attendant. "Yes, hello. Got room for one more?"

"I'm afraid we're booked to full capacity, sir. All the rooms are taken."

"Rooms? I thought this was a tour vessel?"

She tilted her head and smiled patiently. "Yes, sir. In order to give our guests the most thorough experience, however, we insist on taking a two day tour around the Hollow Star."

"Oh, I see." The Doctor thought for a moment, then shrugged. "That's all right, I don't need a room."

"Sir?"

He flipped out the psychic paper. "I'm the Doctor. Sun… expert. I have my own transport off the cruise sorted out."

As the attendant went to inspect the paper further, the Doctor clapped it shut, jamming it back into his pocket.

Stiffening, she nodded. "I see, sir."

Shifting expressions, the Doctor grinned brightly. "Off we go, then. A new experience, completely different and amazing and brilliant than anything that's come before. A bit exciting, isn't it?"

The Catkind stared at him blankly. "Yes, sir. Please get on."

The shine in his eyes dimmed slightly, but the grin remained. "Right, yes. Of course. Allons-y!"

His grin disappeared as soon as he passed the attendant. A Catkind travelling companion clearly wasn't on the cards, then. Shame. It'd been a while since he'd travelled with a non-human. Not that he minded, of course. Humans were brilliant. Well, certain humans were. Always pushing, learning, growing… wanting more.

Some variety would be a nice, though. Maybe a nice Judoon or an Isolus.

As he walked into the main observation area, which seemed more like an airport foyer than a room in a ship, a heavenly chime sounded from all around.

"_Ladies, gentlemen and variations thereupon, the ship will now be departing. You may experience a slight tingling behind the ears as we exit the atmosphere. This is perfectly normal. If you have any concerns, you can contact a physician via the information terminals on each deck. Please enjoy you flight."_

With the slightest of judders, the ship left the dock and rose into the sky. Within a few seconds, they were approaching the atmosphere, and the Doctor did indeed feel a tingling behind his ears. The hairs on the back of his manly hairy hands stood to attention as well, although he was sure that had nothing to do with the ship.

No, that was the feeling of adventure. Blimey, he'd missed it.

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(A/N: Thoughts? Review!)


	3. And Who Might You Be?

-1Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Chapter Two: And Who Might You Be?**_

She stirred from her sleep, awoken by the force-field switching off. Tensing slightly as she shifted herself upright and swung her legs off the bed, she prepared herself for the inevitable questioning.

"_How did you survive travelling through the Sol star?"_

"_Who are you?"_

"_Where are you from?"_

Somehow, she had been expecting 'when are you from?' as well, but the question never came. Odd, that. These people seemed far more advanced than the last group that 'intercepted' her, and yet they asked far more in-depth questions about her method of travel. Most of these enquiries concerned the sun. Or at least, the one they had found her close to. She was under the impression (from what she learned during her last rest-stop) that humans couldn't survive in space without some kind of special suit.

Yet, whenever she asked these people how she survived, she got a stereotypical '_I'm _asking the questions here!'. The backhand was optional, depending on the guard. Most of them didn't see the point.

No questions this time, however. Well, just one, but this wasn't usual at all.

"Are you sure?" the bulky Cat-thing asked, black leather jumpsuit bulging from either fat or muscle.

She frowned. "Sure of what?"

"Sure of your answer?"

Finally, she understood. Sighing, she shook her head. "I don't know how I survived, or why, or who, or when, or where. I'm sorry. I just don't know. If I knew, I'd tell you. But I don't, so…" She waved her hand dismissively. "Never mind."

He nodded, looking ever-so-slightly sad. "I see. Turn around."

Raising her hands up by instinct, she turned around. She felt something hard hitting the back of her head, and that was that. Blackness.

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The black void of space. Never ceased to amaze him sometimes. All void-y and black. The nothingness of it. Nothing physical, anyway. Well, except light, but you rarely _felt _that. Well, except on your eyes. Well, and on your skin. Well… he was losing the point. And in his own head, as well. _That _was embarrassing.

Giving his head a little shake, the Doctor whirled on his heel to face the rest of the auditorium, where what he was sure was the upper crust mingled. Strange how so little changed. He heard demands about stock being barked, murmurings about some _breathtaking _and _marvellous_ new holo-canvas that such-and-such from the third moon of such-and-such had drawn, even though he was blind and had no arms, legs, teeth or nose.

All pretty boring, really.

He spotted something on the far side of the hall, and quickly made his way over. Stopping at the sign above the room, he grinned.

"A little shop," he said. "Brilliant."

Some passing Balhoonian dignitaries passed by him from the café, trying their best to ignore him since he was so _clearly_ beneath him. Choosing to ignore their efforts, the Doctor swung towards them with his hands firmly entrenched in his pockets.

"Excuse me, hello." He extended a hand. "I'm the Doctor. Who might you two be?"

The diminutive blue pair waddled to a stop, glaring up at him. "I am Caps of Balhoon," the left one said, the male of the two. "This is my wife, Num."

"Charmed," Num said, sounding anything but.

"Balhoon, you say? I met the Moxx of Balhoon once."

"Don't be ridiculous," Caps snorted over his O'En champagne. "The Moxx died a century ago when Old Earth was destroyed."

The Doctor shrugged. "And?"

"You're human, dear," Num said in a manner she probably thought was kind but came across as so very condescending. The Doctor couldn't really talk, however. If there was any emotion he could do, it was smug.

"Might look that way," he said cheekily, waggling his eyebrows.

The couple glanced to each other, then back to him. Suddenly the two snobs were intrigued, eh?

"Then what are you?" they asked simultaneously.

"Well," the Doctor said with faux-modesty, "I'm certainly not a Time Lord, if that's what you're thinking."

"We weren't," Caps said, and far too quickly.

"Oh." He frowned, disappointed. "Why not?"

"Time Lords were elegant, regal. You're… well, not."

The Doctor grinned. "You've no idea how much that means to me." He looked around the foyer, trying to look as though he were too busy to be talking to these pithy little Balhoonians. "So then, what brings you to the Hollow Star?"

"Well, we've already been two times, but we couldn't wait to go again," Num enthused, while Caps looked around the room, clearly wanting to be anywhere else but here.

"You're frequent flyers then?"

"Oh, yes. There's something so freeing about travelling. Going anywhere, seeing everything… within reason, of course. Nothing illegal."

Caps snorted into his champagne at that, splashing it over his mouth.

"Oh really, Caps, stop being so messy. Go and clean yourself up." Num smiled up at the Doctor. "We'll be on the observation deck."

Affronted but also looking a little glad to be getting away from his spouse, Caps turned and headed towards where the Doctor assumed the toilets were. If Balhoonians even used toilets. He didn't know how their digestive systems worked. He was sure he heard somewhere they sweated _everything_ out of their bodies… but as he said, he wasn't sure. That was quite rare for him. He made a mental note to go to Balhoon next, find out all he could.

The two made their way up to the observation deck, all the while chatting about current affairs and pop culture (well, Num talked, the Doctor just bluffed his way around by agreeing with some things and vehemently disagreeing with others). When they got to the deck, the Doctor had to pause the conversation to take in the sight of the Hollow Star itself.

"I know," Num murmured. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

"It certainly is," he said, slipping on his glasses. "That's… that's brilliant! How amazing is that, it looks like it has a corona-sphere!" He looked to Num. "Is it a _fact _that it's a solid object inside?"

The Balhoonian nodded silently. "Like a hollowed out apple, we've been told. By a human, obviously. You know how deadly apples are to nearly every other species in the universe."

"Yes, funny about the old apples. More of a banana fan myself." He rummaged around in a coat pocket, and produced a banana. Feeling a little peckish, he peeled it and was about to help himself when he noticed Num.

"Like some?"

She grinned. "Don't mind if I do."

He split it in half and handed one over. They ate in amazed silence, the Doctor unsure of what to do with the banana skin before shrugging and putting it back in his coat pocket. An outside one, obviously. He didn't want it stinking out the whole ensemble he had going on. Janis Joplin would not be pleased if he messed up her coat with a rotten banana.

He perked up when he spotted another ship coming around the star. "What's that?"

"That's Mr Icarus' science vessel."

"Yeah, I was meaning to ask about that. Do you wonder if anyone else sees the irony here?"

"How do you mean?"

The Doctor grinned. "Mr Icarus. Researching the sun."

Num blinked. "I'm not following."

"Icarus? Sun? Wings, wax, melting… no?"

She shrugged apologetically.

"Oh, don't worry, only about five of my friends would get it, and most of them are human…"

"Ah, is it a human thing?"

"A human legend, yeah. Well, not a legend, really. Nice man, Icarus. Bit obsessive though, kept on pestering Romana about K-9…"

Something launched from the science ship.

"What's that then?"

"A probe," Num said, sounding a little tired of the questions. "They're running another test to try and get inside."

"Unmanned?"

"That's what we're told."

The probe swerved a little unnaturally. A bit too unnatural for an unmanned vehicle.

"Hmm. Excuse me," he said, backing up and heading towards a terminal beside the large window. He activated it, and Brannigan's hologram popped up again.

"_Good day to you sir, how might you be today?"_

"Yeah, hi, do you have teleporters on board?"

"_Only for emergencies, sir. They're not for civilian use."_

"Oh no that's fine, I just wanted to make sure."

"_I understand sir, better safe than sorry, that's what I always say."_

"You spent decades on a motorway and didn't question a thing, yeah, I'd say you play it safe."

"_Could you clarify the question sir, I didn't quite catch that."_

The Doctor cocked an eyebrow. 'Brannigan' almost sounded testy then.

"Yes, sorry, tend to mumble a lot, me. Have you got any external sensors on board?"

"_Not for civilian use I'm afraid, sir."_

"Ah, I see. What if I've got clearance?"

"_May I see it, sir?"_

Grinning, the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver. "I thought you'd never ask."

That said, he plunged his arm through the holographic Brannigan and clicked on the screwdriver. Brannigan flickered before disappearing entirely, and the Doctor stepped fully into the console, making sure no-one saw that he wasn't in fact using the terminal correctly. There were indeed external sensors, but they were just applied to making sure nothing hit the ship and regulating its position in relation to the other two ships. Nothing detailed.

The Doctor applied them to the star. Nothing. Well, nothing out of the ordinary; it was just like he had scanned a bog-standard sun. It made him wonder how that scientist chappy had discovered it in the first place. He moved the sensors to the probe.

"Unmanned," he muttered in disgust, seeing the two Catkind life signs on the probe as it dove towards the sun.

"Wait, what?"

It continued down, almost as thought it were heading for the sun deliberately. They were destroyed instantly, the life-signs flickering to nothing. Two people. Living, breathing _people_, just extinguished and displayed as nothing more than a statistic on a computer screen. Just two more numbers for the database.

Face knotted in a scowl, the Doctor accessed the schematics for the cruise ship. Finding the teleporter pads a few floors below, he turned to head out the door. He stopped himself and strode purposefully back to his place beside Num, leaning urgently against the window frame. Well, 'window'. It was more of a force field regulated by how much radiation and force was being applied from the other side.

He blinked the rambling thoughts away. "Right, sorry Num, nice to meet you, but I've got to be off."

"Really? What on Balhoon for?"

"Something important. Got to be sorted, can't wait, really."

She looked around conspiratorially. "Is it something to do with that probe?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Well…" she looked around unsurely, before summoning the Doctor down to her level. He bent forward slightly, ear towards her. "It's just rumours, really. Of bizarre and cruel experiments. Tests to get inside the Star, and so on."

"What do you hear?"

"Just that, really. The scientist in charge, Mal, I think his name is… I've heard that he wasn't even a scientist until fifty years ago, when the Face of Boe opened the motorway."

"So? What's wrong with that?"

"He was a window washer before. How many window washers do you know that became theoretical physicists?"

The Doctor thought about it for a moment, before nodding. He had to concede, he didn't know any ex-window washer geniuses. "You've got a point."

His gaze drifted over to the research ship. "Yes, sorry, got to go, Num. People to see, experiments to check up on, that sort of thing."

"Are you with the police?" Num asked slyly, looking at him sideways as thought this would bring some new perspective to the man standing in front of her.

"Blimey, no. Police have all these rules and regulations. Where's the fun in that?" He grinned and waggled his eyebrows before shooting off to the lift, passing Caps on his way there.

"All right, Caps?" he yelled as he passed, diving between the closing doors of the lift. "Have a nice time with Num, she's brilliant!"

The Balhoonian just shook his head and returned to his wife's side, two new glasses of champagne at the ready. He waddled over to his beloved, handing her a glass which she took with a silent thank you nod.

"Strange man, that Doctor," he murmured.

"Couldn't agree more," she said, taking a sip. "But delightful."

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This was the most of the ship she had ever been shown. Of course, if you've seen one metallic corridor, you've seen them all. The metal floor echoed noisily with each of her steps, quickly followed by the heavy clomping of the guards behind her.

"Are the guns necessary?" she sighed. "It's not like I would know where to go."

Although their faces were hidden by the visors on their helmets, she could still see the sneer on their faces. Although whether they were the cat-things or human she wasn't sure.

"We know full well what you did to the last guard who didn't have a gun."

"Oh?"

The left guard nodded. "He's still in traction."

Smiling serenely, she shrugged. "It was his own fault. Honestly, you call someone handsome and they assume they can have anything they want…"

Lefty (she decided that was as good a name as any, considering they weren't likely to give her their names) just gestured for her to walk through some double doors on her left. With a roll of the eyes, she did so. Instinctually reaching out to push them aside, she was once again surprised by technology as they slid open for her. She had come across those kinds of doors on her last 'pit stop', although they weren't anywhere near as quiet as these. And they made a beep every time she walked through them, alerting people in the shop to her presence. Which got a bit annoying after awhile, she had to admit.

Inside, she found the man who had been the bane of her existence for some time now. Almost from the moment she arrived, this Kevin Mal had been doing everything he could to extract information from her. Some were harmless, others… not so harmless. She presumed the worst and prepared to give the two guards a few slugs if it became necessary. It would just be delaying the inevitable, of course, but she wasn't about to let them do whatever they had planned without a fight.

"Ah," he murmured, looking up from what she had come to realise was a futuristic clipboard, "Please, have a seat."

For a moment, she did nothing, but a jab in the small of her back from Lefty got her moving. She slid into the seat opposite Mal's, the old wooden desk between them.

"So," he continued, sliding the clipboard aside and focusing intense blue eyes on her, "do you have anything to tell me?"

"Like?" she sighed.

"Like… how you survived the destruction of Old Earth. _Where _you came from?"

"I _told _you before, I'm from-"

"The past, yes, of course. But there was nothing in your…" he cleared his throat and allowed himself a tight little smirk, "_vehicle_ that would enable time travel. And we could find no evidence of any kind of temporal schism or… what did you call it?"

"Rift."

"Ah yes, the Rift in time and space."

"You say that as if you don't believe it could exist."

"Well, I wouldn't say that exactly. We just have so little evidence to support it."

Scowling, she gestured irritably to herself.

"Yes, well," he laughed, "besides you, of course. _If _you're telling us the truth."

"Why would I lie?" she moaned exasperatedly.

"Being enveloped by a sun and surviving is no mean feat. However you did it, I wouldn't blame you for wanting to keep that kind of technology to yourself. But I'm afraid," he said, sliding the clipboard back towards him, "this is your last chance to tell us before we have to take… more drastic measures."

She stared at him. "Such as?"

"Such as… throwing you at a sun and seeing what happens."

Launching forward at the desk, she slammed her palms down on the surface. "Look, I don't know anything!" Heavy hands clamped down on her shoulders and forced her roughly back into the chair.

"One minute I was in the past, heading into the clouds, and then I was here, floating in space!"

"As you've told us."

"I told you that because it's true! For Christ's sake, this is ridiculous!"

He frowned at 'Christ', clearly not understanding the reference. Shaking it off, he stood to his full height, fingertips pressed against the desktop.

"Look, this is your last chance. I don't want to do this. Please."

Deep brown eyes bored into his. She was surprised to see the desperation there.

"Then don't," she said evenly, and far more calmly then she thought she would've been able to manage.

His head dropped, and he sighed a heavy sigh. A small little speaker on his desk beeped, and he jabbed a button beneath it.

"What?"

"_Sorry sir, but we've just had an unauthorised teleport from the cruise ship."_

Mal scowled down at the speaker, as thought it were the person speaking to him. "What? Who?"

"_He won't tell us his name, sir, he just calls himself the Doctor."_

"A doctor of what?"

"_No sir, just… the Doctor."_

Rubbing his temples with two fingers, he nodded to the guards, and they heaved her out of the chair.

"Thank you, I'll send someone down." He slapped the button again, and looked to Lefty. "The teleport pads are on the way to the probes. Stop by and see what the hell he wants. Keep _her _out of sight, we don't want him asking any awkward questions."

"Yes, sir."

Mal looked at her sadly. "I'm sorry. I know it won't mean much, but… I am. Truly."

"Sure," she muttered, condensing as much bitterness into the word as possible. "Wait until I come back for you. _Then _you'll be sorry."

She was aware of how ineffectual the words seemed when she was being dragged to her death by hulking guards with guns, but still… it felt good to say them.

It didn't take long to get down to the teleporter room via the lift, where Lefty left her and Righty to go and speak to whoever had discovered this doctor man. What was a doctor doing here unannounced, anyway? Through the closed doors, she could hear Lefty's baritone being deflected by a muffled, lively voice. It seemed to get louder and quieter all over the place, as if the owner of the voice was bouncing off the walls.

The doors slid open, and a skinny man with a long coat and _impossible _hair strolled out in mid-sentence.

"-and I said that _lettuce _would be…"

His eyes fell on her, and then on Righty behind her.

"…better… for…"

He looked to Lefty, who was no doubt pointing a gun at him as well.

"…a salad." He took a breath and nodded. "Right. You've got guns. That's… bad."

"What do we do with him?" Righty asked.

Lefty answered from inside the teleport room. "Just send him into the sun with her."

"Are you serious?"

"What else can we do with him? Lock him up? Won't look good for the company."

"I guess…"

"Actually," the doctor man said, "I've already been on a ship heading into a sun. Wasn't that nice, really. All hot and burning and telepathic sun creatures… as I said, not nice. Tell you what, I've got a better idea."

Something slipped out of his sleeve and into his hand, and he pointed it at the control panel beside the door. Pressing a button, it whirred and the doors slammed shut, locking Lefty in. He looked to her.

"Run!"

Before Righty had much of a chance to do anything, she slammed a heel backwards and between his legs. Judging from the groan that resulted, she guessed he was a human rather than Cat-thing. Turning around, she yanked the helmet off, revealing a reddened face beneath. With an angelic smile, she swung a fist around, sending him twirling on the spot before crashing to the ground. She turned and looked to the doctor, who was frowning.

"Was that really necessary?"

She thought about it for a moment, rubbing her sore knuckles. "Yes, I'd say so."

Not looking convinced, he nodded down the corridor. "Anyway, shall we?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

As they ran, something blasted through the locked doors of the teleporter room, and she could see Lefty charging through over her shoulder. He took aim just as they rounded a corner, the laser blast scorching the wall in front of them.

The doctor grabbed onto her arm and pressed his back to the wall. She followed suit, and watched as he rummaged around in his pockets. His face changed and stretched as his hands went impossibly far into his coat.

"Nope, that's… Ooo, that's soft, what's that? Definitely don't want that… Ah! No, wait, that's a Twix… ah HA! Here it is!"

Triumphantly, the doctor brandished a banana skin. Ignorant of her scepticism, he turned to the corner of the corridor and waited for a few moments before dropping the banana peel to the floor. Almost on cue, Lefty charged around the corner, sliding on the skin and slamming headfirst into the metal wall. He tumbled and landed with a heavy thud on his back. His helmet rolled off, revealing the Cat-thing beneath.

The doctor fellow, meanwhile, was grinning away at his own ingenuity. "Brilliant. Bananas. I've always said bananas are good. Always bring a banana to a party, that's what I say. I'll have to amend that to research ships. 'Always bring a banana to parties and research ships'." He looked to her. "I think that works."

"Uh…"

He thrust out a hand. "I'm the Doctor, by the way."

"Doctor who?"

"No, just… the Doctor."

"What, like a title?"

"If you like. Makes it sound all pretentious, though. And that's _really _not me."

She grinned and grabbed his hand in hers. "Good to hear it."

"And you are? I mean, judging by the clothes, I'm thinking 1950s pilot, but what are you doing here?"

An incredulous smile spread across her face. Who the hell was this man? "Diane Holmes. And would you believe I came through a Rift in time and space?"

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(A/N: Again, not much to add with this one. Reviews, please!)


	4. Just Popping In

-1Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Chapter Three: Just Popping In**_

Mal ran the de-tensifier over his forehead, sighing as the pain subsided. The headaches were getting worse; this body wasn't designed for housing him. And the fact that getting into the Star was becoming a far more frenzied effort with every passing minute wasn't helping matters.

A Crespallion aide rushed over to him so quickly he almost knocked Mal over. His blue skin had a slight sheen on it from nervous sweat, and Mal sighed.

"What is it?" he managed, massaging his temples.

"Well, uh… the test subject, she-"

Mal's hands dropped from his head. "What? What about her?"

"She, um… well, she might be, uh…"

"What?"

"Gone. It was that doctor who managed to get aboard."

"A _doctor _overpowered two highly trained armed guards and escaped with our test subject. A DOCTOR?"

His headache spiked, and his scowl deepened. "Where are they? Have you mobilised security?"

"Yes sir, but we don't have that much on board. Mr Icarus' people didn't see the point in-"

"'Unnecessary expenditures', yes, I was at the briefing." Pacing up and down the corridor, he noted with some annoyance that the Crespallion was mimicking his movements, following him up and down.

"Right," he said finally, anxiously tapping at his chin, "seal off any and all corridors. Guide them to an escape pod."

The aide blinked thin, yellow eyes before nodding. "Uh, yes. Sir, that is. Yes."

Stumbling over his own feet, the boy scurried off down the corridor and back to the command centre, which was Mal's original destination before test subjects escaped and doctors started making trouble. Honestly, a doctor.

He was going to need something more than a de-tensifier for this headache. With a groan, he headed for the lift, intent on sickbay. Maybe _his _doctor could prescribe something to get rid of the pain another doctor had caused.

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Two guards thundered past, big guns swinging around in front of them as they went. The Doctor grimaced. What was it about guns that made them so attractive to nearly every species? The deadliness? The ease? Maybe it was disconnection from the actual death. One shot, bam, that was it. Next please. Maybe it was for people who couldn't handle the actual experience of taking a life. Or people who didn't want to. The Doctor could understand that.

Peeking his head out and looking up and down the corridor, the Doctor slowly emerged and nodded for Diane to follow.

"So you know Jack then?" he murmured.

She swayed her head a little and shrugged. "Only a little. I mean, we met, shook hands, he winked and said something sleazy, and that was that."

"What did you think of Torchwood? I mean, I've met them before, but a different Torchwood, and they weren't exactly friendly. Well, I say not exactly, not at all, really. They didn't even have a shop."

"They were fine. From what Cowell and Ellis told me, they were very polite and kind and helped everyone get used to their… situation."

The Doctor pressed his back to the wall as they reached the corner of the corridor. Checking for movement with the sonic screwdriver, he gradually moved his head forward. Closed off. Hmm.

They continued on.

"But they didn't help _you_?"

"Well…" She smiled a private smile, one the Doctor had seen and indulged in more than once. Treasured memories rising to the surface. "One of them did. He helped me a lot." Her smiled deepened. "And he was _very _good…"

The Time Lord paused. "Oh, you mean as in…"

Diane wiggled her eyebrows. _"Very _good."

Oh, Rassilon, what was it with humans and _that _pastime? Not that he couldn't appreciate it (and wasn't very, _very _good if he said so himself), but there were so many different wonders the universe and people could provide than just exchanging fluids and (more often than not) diseases. When he thought about it, the subject had been broached far more with his current incarnation than any of his past ones. Well, maybe Eight. And that one time with Three, but he would swear up and down for the rest of time that it was more paternal than anything like that. It was all that time amongst humans, that was what did it.

"Well, that's…" He stared off at nothing for a moment, before shrugging. "Exactly what I pictured Jack's Torchwood being like. I met them once, over a TV screen. Turns out I'd met Gwen Cooper's ancestor from the 1800s. Nice girl."

"Which one?"

"Both. And Ianto Jones. A lot of Joneseseseses I've met recently, actually. I hope that's not because of another timeline altering entity. Bit sick of them, to be honest…"

To her credit, Diane didn't really try to understand his borderline senile ramblings. "Did you see Owen?"

"Hm?" He frowned and wracked his brains. And considering it was his brain, that was quite an epic bit of wracking. "Can't remember an Owen. He might have been busy, though. Dalek invasion, stolen earth, difficult to sit still really."

Doing her best to look indifferent, Diane just nodded. The Doctor, however, having had 900 years or so to practice looking indifferent (and still failing most of the time), saw through it pretty easily. Owen was probably the one to 'take care' of Diane back in Jack's day. Although 'Jack's Day' was such a subjective term, considering he had at least two separate timelines on 20th century Earth. Although there was probably more that the Doctor didn't know about.

"So-"

Something pricked the Doctor's ears, and he put up a hand to silence her. "Guards coming from _that _way," he said, swinging a finger to his left. "So that way," he said, bringing the finger around to point to the right.

Three guards appeared at the end of the corridor behind them.

"And quickly!" he yelled, hopping a little before charging off down the corridor. Lasers scorched through the air as they turned a corner, coming to a quick halt when they found the way ahead of sealed off. Turning around, they found the other way blocked by a bulkhead as well.

"Internal security. Now they're just cheating."

"So… what now?"

The Doctor looked around, and found a hatch behind him, blocked by a metal grate. A control panel beside it seemed to control it, and the Doctor slipped out the sonic screwdriver.

"Hang on… ah!" The grate slid up, and the Doctor hurriedly stuffed Diane inside. "The Grate Escape!"

Diane stared at him.

"No? Steve McQueen? Motorcycle jump?"

A laser blast exploded against the entrance to the pod.

"Never mind." He slammed a hand down on the eject button, noting that they were pointed _away _from the sun before he did so. With a blast of compressed air, the pod jettisoned from the ship and shunted across space before finally drifting, aimlessly floating forward.

"Well," the Doctor sighed, relaxing into one of the two chairs facing front in the pod. "What do you want to talk about?"

Diane stared a little longer at him before crawling over. "How about-"

The pod jerked violently, and Diane tumbled over the chair, face down in the seat. Quickly scrambling back into an upright position, she looked around at the blue glow that now filled the pod.

"What is that?"

"Tractor field," the Doctor said, looking around. "So much cheating…"

"So… they're pulling us back in?"

He nodded. "Seems that way. Wait, no… we're…" Brown eyes bulged as something finally hit him. "Diane, why are you here?"

"I don't know, I was going to ask you."

"No, I mean… why are you _here?_ With Mal and that ship?"

"They found me drifting in space about six months ago. I was only out there for a few seconds, but apparently that would have been enough to kill me if not for one of Mal's ships passing by. He thinks I have some magic trick for travelling through a sun without getting hurt."

The Doctor stared for a moment or two longer before affixing his gaze on the window in front of him. "Ah," he said, nodding. "That explains it, then."

"Explains what?"

He kept his eyes on the window as the star came into view. "Why we're being thrown into the sun."

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Diane blinked. Had he just said what she thought he just said? Because if he _had_… she wasn't going to be happy. Not that she was particularly happy with anything that had happened over the past few months, but the Doctor showing up had been a highlight. For about six minutes, anyway. Now she suspected he was just mad, especially considering the way he seemed wholly unconcerned about them heading towards the sun.

"We're being _thrown _into the sun?"

"Yep."

"But… w… how?"

"I told you. Tractor field. And I know that might sound like a simplistic farmer talking, but what it _actually _means is that we've been grabbed, and now…"

"All right, fine… so what are you going to do?"

He looked at her. "Me?"

"Yes, you. You're the Doctor of… actually, what _are _you a Doctor of?"

"Well," he said, dipping his head to the side, "bit of everything, really. Except _Monopoly_, I was never any good with money. Kept on going to jail."

His grin did nothing to reassure her.

"Doctor."

"Hm?"

Diane stabbed an annoyed finger towards the window. "Sun?"

"Oh! Right, yes. Well… basically…" He looked around the escape pod before sighing. "Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"You want to get those ears looked at. You're repeating things a lot."

"Why can't we do anything?"

He waved a finger around the pod. "All we've got are manoeuvring thrusters. No way we can disengage the course we're on n-"

The Doctor stared blankly ahead.

"Doctor?"

A thin, silencing finger shot into the air. So Diane waited. After about ten seconds, the sight of the rapidly approaching sun spurred her on.

"Doctor-"

"SHSHSHSHSHSH!" He hissed, scowling as he waved his hand about. Suddenly his entire face popped wide open, and he smiled. "A telepathic field…"

"A what?"

"There's a telepathic field surrounding the sun. Low level, you'd have to be very close to feel it… but it's definitely there."

She stared at him for a moment before shaking her head. "What's a telepathic field?"

A disparaging look was shot her way. "Blimey, you are from the fifties…" he muttered. "'It Came From Outer Space'? 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'? 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'? The original, mind, not the remake."

"The what… _what?"_

"Mind-reading."

"But that's-"

"Oh, you are _not _about to say the word 'impossible'."

Her mouth hanging open, Diane thought about it for a moment. Cat people, Hollow Stars, spaceships, Space-Time Rifts…

"Point taken. So the sun is a mind reader?"

He frowned, looking for a way to explain it. "Well, not really. It's not like the sun is alive. Not that _that's_ unheard of, I mean, this one time with a friend of mine called Martha-"

"A bit of focus, Doctor!

"Oh, yes! Well, there's a mind-reading field surrounding the planet. So I'd guess that whoever built it had some kind of telepathic abilities specially attuned to the frequency being transmitted by the Star. Easier to stop unwanted guests that way, I suppose. Unless you're a member of a particular species… barbeque."

Diane sighed. "And we're not a species it'll recognise, I suppose."

"Well, maybe not you…" he murmured, before cocking an eyebrow in her general direction.

"Oh, right. So you're an alien too?"

He glared. "From my point of view, _you're _an alien. Anyway, it just so happens that I'm also a _brilliant_ alien who has got quite a talent with telepathy. Well, sort of."

Diane ducked her head. "'Sort of'?"

An admittedly charming wink and smile went her way before the Doctor focused his attention on the sun. Taking a deep breath through his nose, he closed his eyes. Diane hoped he hadn't suddenly decided to take a nap. Even if she hadn't just found out he was an alien, she wouldn't have put it past him. He was strangely nonplussed by the most… well, dangerous things. It was almost like he did this sort of thing all the time.

The serene calmness of her travelling companion came to a stop when he suddenly jolted to the side.

"Doctor?"

Was the escape pod moving faster?

She reached out and jostled the Doctor about. "Doctor? Could you wake up now?"

The sun was blinding her now. "Doctor… _please _wake up, you mental bastard…"

Heat poured in, and she brought up her hands in a futile gesture that nonetheless felt instinctively right.

"Doctor!"

Then, suddenly, she was falling, and landed hard on a metallic floor. The impact mostly got her on her right side, and her arm throbbed as she picked herself up. It was dark, wherever she was. Small white lights lined the ceiling that towered high above her, but they weren't strong enough to provide much of anything. Taking a cautious step forward, her boot collided with something relatively soft.

Someone groaned.

She crouched down and felt around for a face. Finding the wiry hair of the back of the Doctor's head, she reached around and rolled him over. She felt around for his face and brought her ear to his mouth. Still breathing. Moving down, she pressed her head to his chest.

His heart was beating, but it was very erratic. No, strike that. Not erratic, just weird. Like there was an echo.

"Doctor?"

Nothing. She shook him a little.

"Doctor?"

"Ace, I'm enjoying the sun, leave me alone…"

"Oh for God's sake," she muttered. Only one way to get a man's attention, alien or not. She reached down and grabbed the most precious of the precious. Well, he was human enough where it counted, she supposed.

"Romanadvoratrelundar!" the Doctor cried, sitting bolt upright to the point where the longest excesses of his mad hair were tickling her forehead.

"Doctor?"

A pause. "…yes?"

"Are you awake?"

"After that?" He swallowed loudly. "Yes. Speaking of which, could you…?"

"Oh yes, sorry," she muttered, standing up and dusting off her hands after a job well done. "Where are we?"

The Doctor didn't answer, and she heard a vague shuffling as he presumably got to his feet.

"Doctor?"

"You couldn't think of anything else to wake me up? Not 'Doctor, the house is on fire'? 'Doctor, reversing the polarity of the neutron flow doesn't really work nowadays and is sort of old hat'? Nothing like that?"

"Woke you up, didn't it?"

"Well, yes, but… honestly. I don't know of any other species in the galaxy who are as obsessed with…"

"What?"

"… _fornication. _Well, except the Zygons. Don't even _start _on their mating rituals. Poetry, jam, and four different types of trees… now _that's_ something I'd never like to see again. Although granted, the first time was by accident. You'd think they'd understand two people camping in the woods and looking for firewood, but no, there was me and Leela, strung up by our arms and legs and left to dangle perilously over a pit of molten-"

"Doctor."

"Hm?"

"Where are we?"

"Oh, inside the Star, I suppose. Transmat beam took us through at the last second. At least I _think _that's what it was… hard to tell, I was sort of blacking out from indescribable pain."

Diane frowned. "Trans… pain?"

"Well, 1) a Transmat stands for 'Matter Transmission'. Don't ask me why it's put backwards, I never understood either. Basically, your body is broken down into molecules, downloaded into computer data and sent to another location. And B, no… 2! Pain because this place wasn't designed for my brainwaves, and that…" He blew out a shaky breath. "I'll be honest, that almost killed me, brain-wise. If I had to do that again, I don't think it'd end well."

Nodding, Diane rubbed her face. "What's computer data?"

There was a deafening silence. "What's…" He sighed. "Right, right, the 1950s…"

"Could you please stop saying that? And while we're on the subject, how did I get from the 1950s to the 2000s to here anyway?"

The small blue light he had used before appeared a few feet away from her, and that strange whirring echoed. "The Rift," the Doctor said simply, his face illuminated by the blue light. "When you left Torchwood and flew into it, you travelled through it to this point. Well, relatively. See, awhile ago, the Earth was destroyed. Consumed by the sun. And the Rift probably went with it. So when it was destroyed, it ejected anything that was travelling through it. For example, oh, I don't know… a human pilot from the 1950s?"

He grinned over at her, his teeth made blindingly white by the strange device. She didn't really notice, though.

"The Earth's gone?"

"Yeah… sorry."

"What about… us, though? I mean, humans. Were we…?"

"Oh, you're fine. You weren't on Earth when it exploded, don't worry."

She nodded. "Right. But that was awhile ago, you said?"

"About a century, give or take."

"Then why did I end up coming out of the Rift only a few months ago?"

He took a deep breath, as though he was going to begin something. Then he blew it out again. "Well, you know time? How it's all about cause and effect?"

"Vaguely. Einstein, right?"

"Well, Contonlintonklor, actually, but Einstein sort of got it too. But basically, it's rubbish. Time's all wibbly wobbly."

"'Wibbly wobbly'?

"Yup. And timey wimey. Oh, and it's like a big ball."

"So… a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey…"

"Stuff."

"…stuff." She sighed. "You're a strange man."

"Oh, yes," he replied calmly. He looked at her with a grin. "But I _do _make things interesting."

As she finally mustered the insanity to actually return his smile, the Doctor suddenly ran to the left, blue light bobbing up and down wildly.

"Ah, there you are!"

A large screen, about half the size of a cinema screen, lit up, white text on a blue background scrolling around so quickly Diane couldn't follow it. The Doctor pressed his whirring torch to it.

"Lights, lights…"

As if hearing him, the lights came up, and suddenly Diane could see everything again.

"Lovely!" the Doctor enthused, pulling out some thick rimmed glasses and slipping them on. "Now, what else is on here?"

"What is it?"

"A computer."

"And what's that?"

He looked at her like she was an idiot, then sighed. "Oh, yeah-"

"If you say 'the 1950s' again, I will hit you."

His mouth clamped shut, and his eyes wandered around while he thought of something else to say.

"Never mind. Basically, in your future… well, there were _some _computers in your time, but very basic. Eventually you get the microchip, and then memory…" He spotted her stare, and once more closed his mouth. "Basically, they're machines that sort of think for themselves and perform tasks that people could otherwise do but are too lazy to. Fair enough?"

Although she had quite a few more questions about the whole thing, Diane just closed her eyes and nodded. There was only so much frantically delivered information she could take in one sitting.

"Oh, that's interesting…" he murmured, and she looked up from massaging her forehead.

"What?"

"Well, nothing _really_, but…" A frown wrinkled his face. "But that shouldn't be so easy to access, what's it doing there?"

"Doctor, _what is it?"_

"It's nothing. Honestly," he said quickly and quietly. "But just in case…" He stabbed the blue whirring thing into the screen for just a moment before bringing it back again, smiling.

"What is that thing?"

"Sonic screwdriver."

She stared at it. "Sonic?"

"Yeah, as in… sound. Sonic. Yeah? Common technology from the 50th century onwards. Of course, I've made some modifications since I first got it, but it's still got the same basic functions. Opens doors, and then locks them again."

"And turns on computers."

"Oh, yeah, and that," he added, grinning. "Right!" He shouted, clapping his hands together. "I've found what looks like the control centre. Shall we see what this Hollow Star's like, then? How much do you want to bet they've got a little shop?"

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(A/N: Nothing much to add, just… reviews, please!)


	5. Well, That's Different

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Chapter Four: Well, That's… Different**_

The Hollow Star was big on the inside. Of course, considering it was the size of a star, that was hardly surprising, but still… big. Oh, and very. It was like a towering metallic cathedral. It somewhat reminded the Doctor of the Cloister Room on the TARDIS. Well, how the Cloister Room looked at one point or another. It seemed to change by itself without him messing with the desktop themes. Annoying, that.

"Are you actually a doctor, then?"

He blinked and turned to Diane, who wasn't in fact looking at him, but rather at the corridor around them. Which was fine; if there was anything the Doctor enjoyed in people, it was curiosity and wonder. Depending on the subject, of course.

"Well, I know my medicine."

"No certificates, then?"

"Well…" he cleared his throat. "Does a 'thank you' note from Mother Theresa count?"

She shot him a look that he realised he should have been more than used to after 900 years of travelling through time and space. It was a 'You really are a time traveller, aren't you?' look.

"You actually _are _a time traveller, aren't you? No joke?"

He shook his head. "No. And who would joke about being a time traveller?" He came to a halt at an intersection and went off to the left authoritatively.

"Do you know where you're going?"

"Sort of."

Diane was silent for awhile as they walked, a surprising lack of noise coming from their footfalls.

"So you're a time travelling doctor who also happens to rescue people being thrown into suns?"

"Well, not _exclusively_ people who are being thrown into suns. I just…" He looked around absently, the thought only just popping into his head that they could wander around this place for a long, _long_ time. The map he had seen wasn't very portable, but he had counted on consoles being dotted around the place. No such luck.

"… I try to help out where I can."

"And how does that work out for you?"

"Never really thought about it," he lied bluntly, sniffing loudly before leading her down a corridor on the left.

"Do you do this by yourself, then?"

"No, people help me," the Doctor said lightly, _really _hoping she would drop this soon. "Sometimes they… well, they travel with me."

"But not anymore?"

"Nah, not for the moment. It always tends to get…"

"Complicated?"

He nodded, doing his best not to look at her. As she spoke, however, he found it difficult to ignore her.

"That's why I prefer to travel alone," she said smoothly, running a hand along the blue metal beside her. "Too many complications. Even if they don't mean to, they always end up leaving or hurting themselves just to be with you. After awhile… the cons outweigh the pros, I suppose."

She turned and noticed the Doctor staring at her, seeing himself. As a woman. Which was a bit weird.

"You all right?"

"Hm?" He blinked, then nodded slowly. "Oh… yeah, yeah. Fine. I'm always all right, me."

With a face that said she didn't really believe anything he just said, Diane continued walking, overtaking the Doctor and leaving him staring at the back of her head.

He blinked. "Don't just go wandering off," he moaned, quickly catching up to her.

"I'm not a child."

"No, but you _are _from the 1950s."

A steely hand thumped his arm.

"Ow! What was-"

The Doctor remembered her earlier threat.

"-oh. Guess I deserved that, then. But still, you know what I mean. You don't even know what a computer is."

"Well, I do _now_."

"Yes, but- stop being awkward."

"Stop being patronising."

"I'm never-! Well, actually, you've got me there. Look, just… better safe than sorry, yeah? There might be booby traps, tripwires, poison gas, lasers-"

"A door."

"Yep, them too." He frowned. "Wait, door? What?"

Diane nodded to their left, where there was indeed a door.

"Am I right?" she asked, sounding somewhere between smug and amazed with herself.

"You certainly are, madam," the Doctor said, slipping on his glasses. He ran his hands over the smooth metal surface, looking the door up and down. It stretched up to the ceiling. Whoever or whatever had made and used this place… they had been big. And probably still were, come to think of it.

Sonic screwdriver thrust into the air, the Doctor waved it around, searching for a signal. He found it in the wall beside the door, where a control panel helpfully slid open as he approached. It took him three strides to walk the width of the door. There didn't seem to be any buttons for him to press, either via manual controls or touch screen, so that would imply some kind of telepathy or telekinesis. The Doctor stuck with the sonic screwdriver.

"What's telekinesis?"

The Doctor whipped his head around. "How did you… know I was thinking about telekinesis?"

"You just said it."

"Did I? Don't think I did. Fairly sure I was just thinking it. Believe me, I'm very mindful of when I speak and when I don't." His attention was firmly on Diane now, having found something equally interesting.

"What is that? Latent telepathy?"

"Latent what?"

"Telepathy. It means you can read minds."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, shut up."

"No, really! You just did it then. I was thinking telekinesis, and you heard it. Well, thought it. Well, _I _thought it, technically, but you caught it with your mind, so you sort of thought it. Kind of. Anyway," he said lightly, returning to the control panel, "nothing to worry about. You've probably had it all your life."

"I don't think so."

"Ever just… known things? Little things, never important, really. Like being able to tell what someone's reading even though you're on the other side of the room. Hearing voices when no-one else does, that sort of thing?"

"…no. Never."

_That _got his attention back. "You sure?"

"Yeah," she laughed. "Pretty much."

"Oh. Could've sworn…" He shrugged. "Maybe I did say it out loud…"

"It happens when you get older."

"Oi. How old do you think I am?"

"Well, you're about nine hundred years old, so-" Diane stopped herself. "How did I know that?"

"Hmm," the Doctor added. "And I wasn't even thinking about my age." He stepped into Diane, studying a little more intently as he rambled on. "Rarely do, just depresses me, really. When I can keep the figure straight, anyway."

She shoved a hand between their faces. "Do you mind?"

"What, am I stepping on your foot?"

"No, you're nearly jabbing my eye out with your nose."

He recoiled as though burned, and crossed his eyes to get a better look at the offending growth. "I didn't think my nose was that bad. You should have seen my last one. And the ears! Blimey, you'd have something to make fun of now, I can tell you."

The Doctor returned to his study of her.

"You've had more than one nose?"

He nodded. "Nine, in fact. Got three more left after this one, though. Maybe I'll get it right someday." A switch flicked in his brain, and he moved on to serious matters. "So you've never had this kind of thing before?"

"Never."

"Right…"

"Is that bad?"

"No, just strange… did the good Kevin Mal subject you to any tests or treatments?"

Diane frowned in thought. "No… he just shone lights on me that went up and down. Scanning, I think someone said."

The Doctor chewed his cheek in thought. "Hmm…" Brain thoroughly occupied, he returned to the control panel to order his thoughts by concentrating on something else. Usually helped, that. Sonic screwdriver whirring away, it filled the silence for a few moments before Diane moved up to him.

"Are you saying that wasn't what he was doing?"

A groan escaped the Doctor as he tried to explain. "It's difficult to say without seeing the equipment he used. He might have done something that made you more susceptible to telepathic signals. Although why you'd be able to read my thoughts is something_ completely _more troubling- ah!"

With a creaky, epic grunt, the doors slid open, light from the corridor spilling into the darkness of the chamber beyond.

"Open sesame, eh?"

She smiled at him sarcastically. "We have that in the 1950s."

"Now who's being patronising?"

The Doctor strode inside first, sonic screwdriver drawn and already scanning halfway out of the pocket. It led him to another control panel on his right. With a few figurative pokes from the sonic screwdriver, a gentle _ping_ echoed from somewhere around them, and light suddenly flooded the room.

Diane squinted, holding her hand up to the bright light. The Doctor just blinked a few times before tucking the screwdriver into his jacket. The chamber, much like the rest of the Star, was big. Epic, even. And epic wasn't an adjective the Doctor used often. Except when talking about _The Empire Strikes Back_. Or his own brainpower, and even then, sparingly. He didn't want to seem too full of himself, after all. 'Clever' seemed to fit the bill most of the time.

A thick, circular tower sat in the middle of the chamber, reaching up to the very top of the ceiling, which was at least fifteen stories up. There, it branched off into different directions, thick pipes full of circuitry and power leading to the different sides of the cylindrical chamber.

Eight alcoves were embedded in the walls, four on each side of the Doctor and Diane. And inside…

"What are they?" Diane said, her voice only just a whisper. Ah, first alien sightings. The Doctor wished he could remember the feeling of meeting his first alien. He suspected he may have hit it with a stick, but couldn't quite remember.

"Well…" he mumbled, frown firmly embedded on his forehead. "They look like Macra."

"No, they look like giant crabs."

He rolled his eyes. "Which, in turn, look like Macra."

They weren't moving, however. Diane waved a careful hand around in front of them, and the Doctor yanked her away.

"What? Are they not friendly?"

"Not usually, no."

She rubbed the side of her head, hissing slightly. Trying his best not to look panicked, the Doctor looked to her.

"What?"

"Nothing. Little headache."

"Just now?"

"Yeah, when you pulled me away."

The Doctor put both hands on either side of her head and closed his eyes. Diane, not quite sure what was going on, looked at both hands before glaring at the Doctor.

"Excuse me!"

"Oh, don't worry about it, most human minds are quite jumbled."

"No, w-" she sighed, holding her urge to shout inside for a little longer. "What are you doing?"

"I'm thinking you might have a…" he drifted off, eyebrows bouncing up and down. "Ooo…that's interesting. _Very _interesting."

"What?"

He took a deep breath before releasing her and shaking himself off, wiggling his arms and legs about like a warm-up. "You have a telepathic field in your head. And it's almost the same as the one that surrounds the entire Hollow Star."

"The one you used to get in, you mean?"

"Oh yes."

"How did… how?"

The Doctor sighed and nodded to the Macra. "Them."

"But they're not even moving."

"No…" Grunting in annoyance at not knowing what was going on, the Doctor fished out the sonic screwdriver and ran it around the Macra in front of him. "Stasis."

"What's that?"

"Um… it's sort of like freezing someone, locking them in one state until they're woken up at a designated time."

"But when someone freezes, they die. I've seen it."

He continued scanning as he explained wearily. "Yeah, but stasis is a little more complicated than that. It regulates your vitals and… everything else, basically leaving you stuck as you are until someone wakes you up."

"A bit like what happened to me, then?"

"No, no… no, that was time travel. Completely different- oh, WHAT?"

Diane jumped a little as he scowled at the sonic screwdriver, which was giving him thoroughly confusing readings.

"What?"

His glare at the device in his hand lingered a little longer before he returned his attention to her. "Yeah, sorry… seems the sonic screwdriver doesn't want to admit they're Macra. Says they're something else."

Putting the screwdriver away, the Doctor sidled up to the frozen Macra-a-like. He smiled. Macra-a-like. That was good. Probably should write that one down.

"What looks like a Macra, smells like a Macra, tastes like a Macra, but isn't a Macra?"

He looked back to Diane questioningly. She just shrugged.

"Oh, bad sport, Diane Holmes. You've got to at least _guess_."

Diane stared at him for a few moments before licking her lips. She threw her hands in the air limply. "Lobsters?"

Not quite sure if he had heard her right, the Doctor fixed his gaze on her for a few more moments than were strictly necessary before speaking.

"Lobsters."

She just shrugged again.

"Yeah… better let me do the guessing from now on."

"Look, it's not like I _should _know and I don't. I _am _from the 1950s."

The Doctor grinned. "Now that you've said it, can I say it?"

"No. 1950s people only."

Letting out a slight breath of a laugh, the Doctor wandered to the central column, leaving Diane to look warily at the Macra.

"Is there any way to wake them up?"

"Probably, but I don't know the technology well enough to do it safely for them. And besides, I haven't really had good experience with Macra. Probably best _not _to unleash eight of them on us at once. If there _are _only eight, there might be more all over the Star."

"But you said these weren't Macra."

Frowning, the Doctor tugged on his ear, keeping his gaze on the column as he strolled around it. "Yeah, but still… if they _act _like Macra… let's just say they have a tendency to get quite snippy."

The Doctor grinned and Diane groaned, almost simultaneously.

"Can't believe you just said that…"

He stopped circling the column when he came to a blank screen. Diane walked around to join him as he scanned it over with the sonic screwdriver.

"Doctor…"

"Hmm?"

"Was this place made by these… Macra things?"

"They're not the Macra."

The tired look she gave him was evident, even if he couldn't see it. "Well they're something that _looks_ like the Macra."

"Yup, go on."

"So… why are all the screens and buttons so small?"

"Slave labour," the Doctor replied abruptly. It wasn't really stuff he liked talking about. "When I first met them they were using humans as slaves to produce gas, which they use as food. And they could control them through telepathy, so the Macra could pretty much sit back and relax while their slaves did everything for them."

Diane nodded, her eyes on a Macra-a-like sitting in an alcove directly across the chamber from her. She leaned back against the column and looked back to the Doctor.

"Is it working yet?"

"Yep, just powering up." A keyboard slipped out of the column from a space beneath the screen, and the Doctor felt a tickle of amusement that even the Macra in the year five billion still used the QWERTY keyboard layout. Putting away the sonic screwdriver, he got to work.

Ah. Teleporters.

"We're teleporting again?"

"How did-" He stopped and groaned. "I really wish you'd stop doing that."

"Why? Afraid I'll hear something dirty?"

"Oh, please," he muttered.

"I bet your head's full of filth, just waiting to be-" Her face scrunched up, and she recoiled slightly in horror. "What the hell was that you just showed me?"

"The seventies. So unless you want more…?"

"Well it's not like I can help it, is it?"

"Just concentrate on _not _hearing things. A bit basic, but it'll do for now."

"Right. Concentrate on _not _hearing things. Easy…"

He fished out the holo-map the Brannigan hologram had given him. Provided the scanners for this place were working properly (which it seemed they were), the Doctor found it easy to overlay the map of the city onto the readings the sensors were bringing back of New Earth.

Which meant that Mr Icarus' office was…

"Right!" he announced, putting the map away again. "We're off to New Earth!"

"But… what about them? How're we going to get back in?"

Hands in pockets, he looked around the room. "Well, there's nothing much more I can do for them without a better understanding of their physiology and technology, and since the Macra seem to be the closest match, I'm hoping I'll be able to find some information on the planet. Or an actual Macra, that'd be even more brilliant. Brilliant-er. Brilliant-y."

He shook his head, getting his sentence back on track.

"And as for getting back in… well, we'll figure something out on the way back." He grinned. "More fun that way. Any more questions?"

He was surprised at how eager he sounded. When he was on his way somewhere, he usually didn't have much patience for this many questions. Depended largely on which face he was wearing, of course.

"Just one," Diane said. "How were they planning on waking up? I mean, if they're frozen, they couldn't control the slaves, right? So… who would wake them up?"

The Doctor opened his mouth. Then he shut it again. "That," he said slowly, a questioning eyebrow sent towards the central column, "is a very good question, Diane Holmes."

His gaze settled on her again, and he smiled. "Let's go and find out."

He tapped a button, and they were gone in a flash of light.

(A/N: Hey, thanks for all the reviews, keep it up!)


	6. Wibbly Wobbly

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Chapter Five - Wibbly Wobbly**_

Mr Robert Icarus wasn't surprised by much these days. Occasionally an angry memo would come through from employees when their contracts had been terminated (never mind the fact they had been stealing supplies for the past seven months), and that would catch him off guard.

But most of the time, it was just same old, same old. People come in, complain to him about something, he smiles and gives out the same old platitudes ( 'I'll look into it,' 'I've got my best people working on it' etcetera), and they leave. Sometimes it was his wife he was giving those platitudes to, albeit over the phone.

At the moment, he was in a meeting with Mr Karl, the Administrator of Agricultural Development for the Society of the Prevention of Pollution of the Landmasses Immediately Surrounding the State of New New York.

That was his actual title. Mr Icarus had asked to see his card, and, true enough, there it was, text taking up the entirety of the card itself. There wasn't even enough room for contact details.

Icarus wasn't expecting much to surprise him in this meeting, which would no doubt take the better part of the day.

He certainly wasn't expecting a flash of light in the corner of his office. And he was absolutely in _no way _expecting a skinny man with insane hair and a long coat to step forward with a dark haired, admittedly beautiful woman beside him.

An interesting day. At last.

* * *

While Diane simply tried to stop the room spinning from the shock of the teleport, the Doctor strode forward, flipping out a wallet as he went. He flashed whatever was inside to the man sat on the visiting side of the desk.

"Hello, I'm the Doctor. I'm here to see Mr Icarus, and I don't think you're him because you're on the wrong side of the desk."

Both men stared at him, one gaping while the other looked on with mild, amused curiosity.

After a long silence, the man who seemed to be the owner of the desk said, "Do you have an appointment?"

"Does it look like I have an appointment?"

"Not really, no. I just thought I'd ask."

Diane noted with some amusement that the Doctor was taken slightly off-guard by that. But only for the briefest of moments, it seemed, because the alien man quickly slipped his wallet away and put his hands in his pockets authoritatively.

"I'd like a word, do you mind? Of course you don't," he continued, sitting down in the chair beside the visiting gentleman. Gangly legs swung up onto Mr Icarus' desk, beaten white trainers on display for all to see. For some reason, Mr Icarus seemed entranced by them.

"Nice shoes. Antiques."

Once again, the Doctor seemed a little taken aback. He blinked, and it was over. "Thanks. Good for running. Comfy. When you get to my age, the little things get more important. You know what I mean?"

Mr Icarus stared at him blankly, fingers laced in front of him on the desk. He calmly looked over at his previous visitor.

"Mr Karl, would you mind if we postponed our meeting for now?"

The little man cleared his throat nervously. "No, not… not at all." Glancing between the Doctor and Diane nervously as he left, Mr Karl skittered out of the room.

After the door slid shut behind him, the Doctor rolled his eyes and reached into his jacket.

"Finally. I thought he'd never leave," he muttered, bringing out the sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the door. A latch in the wall clunked around, and the door was locked. Apparently. Diane wasn't sure how people could be sure with these sliding things.

The Doctor clearing his throat got her attention, and he nodded to the seat beside him. "Come on, take a seat. Can't start until everyone's at the meeting."

She slowly went around, keeping her eyes on Icarus as she went. He seemed rather unassuming. Not particularly athletic looking, wispy brown hair… he resembled a scholar more than any kind of businessman. But there was something in the eyes. Something hard, icy. They betrayed nothing about him.

"You do realise that Mr Karl is calling security as we speak?" Icarus said slowly, leaning back in his luxurious black leather chair. Or at least, it looked like leather. Diane wondered if cows even existed in the year five billion. Space cows? Astro-cows?

The Doctor sniffed dismissively, looking out the large window on the left of the office. "This won't take long. It's more of a question and answer session, really."

"Is that right?"

"Oh, yes," the Doctor muttered quietly. Dangerously. He brought his attention around to Icarus, and leaned forward in his chair. "Personally, I'd like to know what makes you think it's not a problem for you to let people die so you can have the latest grab at some new piece of technology."

Icarus frowned only very briefly before returning to a more relaxed expression. "I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, yes, of course, I know you don't know anything about it, you would never be so corrupt and of such low moral character to stoop to such methods, blah-de-blah-de-blah. De. _Blah_. It may be difficult to understand, but I _have _heard these excuses before."

"Really?"

They just stared at each other. Diane rolled her eyes at the measurements that were going on at that very moment.

"Does Dr Mal work for you?" she asked bluntly, and the Doctor looked at her with mild surprise. "Well, I want to know."

"I was getting there!" he whined defensively.

"Really? You seemed more bothered with big Doctor posturing than actually getting to it."

"W- I… do you mind?" The Doctor nodded to Icarus. "Good cop/bad cop doesn't really work if the cops are arguing with each other."

"Who's arguing? I'm right, you're wrong. Anyway," she said quickly, bulldozing over the Doctor's vehement response, "Mr Icarus. Does Dr Mal work for you?"

This time she was the subject of his blank stare. The Doctor watched from beside her, sulking from being removed from the interrogation.

Slowly, and very deliberately, Icarus said, "Yes."

"So you told him it was okay for him to throw me at a sun and see what happened?"

That frown returned again, but this time it didn't leave entirely. "What?"

"Oh yes," the Doctor interjected, still looking slightly pout-y. "And she's not the only one. Except the test subjects before her weren't lucky enough to survive."

Another long pause. "And Dr Mal authorised these tests?"

"Authorised, endorsed… took part in," Diane said, trying her best (and failing) not to seethe in front of the man.

He didn't look particularly happy himself.

"What a surprise this must be for you," the Doctor drolled. He leant forward again. "What I want to know is, what are the Macra doing inside the Hollow Star? Any ideas?"

"The Macra?"

"Inside the Star, there are stasis pods with Macra inside. Or something similar. Now, you can't look me in the eye and tell me you didn't know they were there. So, really, the only thing left is for you to tell me what you're planning to do with them and the Star."

For the first time, Mr Icarus seemed visibly perturbed. "It's a research project. That's all."

Diane looked at him. Really _looked _at him. She thought she had a pretty good lie detecting instinct. Nothing in Mr Icarus' demeanour and reactions made her distrust him. A little standoff-ish, certainly, but then again, she and the Doctor had burst in without an invitation. Something clicked in her mind. She couldn't hear Icarus' thoughts. Or the Doctor's, for that matter. Her low level tele-thing was gone.

The Doctor seemed less willing to deal. "'A research project?' If you think I'm stupid enough to fall for that, well…" he stood up and walked to Diane, "you probably think I don't know that security's just outside."

His hand on Diane's shoulder, he guided her back a few steps so they had they backs to the window. A screen beside the door exploded, and the door slid open. Four armed troops not unlike the guards from Mal's ship poured through, rifles towards them.

She looked over at the Doctor. He seemed less than worried.

"Forgot to say, Mr Icarus, this is a nice office. You've got every amenity catered for. En-suite bathroom and shower, windows, mug holder, Pac-man arcade machine…" A crafty finger poked out behind him, aiming for a control panel beneath the window.

"…personal teleporter?"

A flash of light made Diane squint, and she rubbed her eyes with her hands. Colours danced around her vision, but, to her credit, the dizziness was nowhere near as pronounced as the last time.

She blinked the swirling colours away, and realised they were somewhere dark. She could barely make out the shape of the Doctor's wild hair as he frantically looked around.

"We need to go. I locked the teleport systems when I locked the door, but it won't take them long to fix it and trace us down here."

"'Down here'? Where are we?"

"Underground. What used to be the motorway. Twenty three miles from the New New Jersey entrance. Last time I was here, the entire population of New Earth lived here. Trundling on in their little metal boxes a few metres at a time…" he shuddered. "Glad that's over. Although…"

He looked up.

"That happened up there. We're on the ground floor. Or as close as the teleport system will take us."

"What's so important about that?"

"Well…" the Doctor said slowly, looking over at her. "This is where the Macra lived."

* * *

Mal worked feverishly on the matrix device, ignoring the ran the tension knotting in his forehead. He would need the device later, if worse came to worse. These human bodies really weren't designed for him; so weak, physically and mentally. He sometimes wondered how they did anything at all.

Of course, it didn't help when strange doctors and people from billions of years in the past appeared out of nowhere and bungled up his experiments. What stung him the most was that they were somehow successful in getting into the Star.

At first they had thought the two had simply burned up in the sun. But looking back on the sensor logs confirmed that it was only the escape pod that went down in flames, not the people inside. Whatever they did, they somehow managed to trigger a response from the Star and teleport inside.

But how? The sensors didn't register any transmissions to and from the pod, and neither of them seemed to have portable teleport technology with them. Even if they did, Mal's ship and the tour vessel were too far away for it to do them any good. They would have ended up floating in space.

"So what the hell happened?" he muttered, setting the in-progress device aside and glaring down at the sensor logs in front of him. His desk, once so cluttered with reports and readouts, was now simply taken up by a single pad, the old contents of his desk shunted to the floor in frustration.

"Sir?"

He looked up at his Crespallion assistant, whose name he hadn't bothered to remember. "What?"

"Mr Rom would like to speak to you."

Mr Icarus' right hand man.

"Tell him I'm busy."

His assistant hesitated, yellow eyes darting about the place unsurely. "He seemed rather insistent, sir."

"What's it about? Do you know?"

"He says a doctor burst into his office and had some… interesting things to say."

Mal dropped the pad to the desk and stared at the Crespallion. "What things?"

"Mr Icarus wouldn't say, sir. He wants to talk to you about it. Encrypted channel seven, sir."

He nodded and waved the assistant away, who left quietly. It was something he appreciated in their species, he had to say. Dignified, quiet, doing their jobs without question. If only other species were so agreeable all the time.

Case in point…

"_Hello, Dr Mal." _His stony visage was even more harsh than usual, if that were possible.

"Mr Rom."

"_I take it you know why I'm calling?"_

"Not really. Your message was a little vague."

"_Yes, well, we wouldn't want everyone hearing about how Mr Icarus' company is performing experiments and killing the test subjects, would we?"_

Mal swallowed loudly. "The Doctor told him that?"

"_Either him, or a lady with black hair and antiquated clothing. Although they both look like they stepped out of the stupid ages."_

"I… see."

"_They said some interesting things, Kevin. For example, the Doctor asked Mr Icarus some questions about Macra that I found rather intriguing."_

Suddenly, Mal felt rather nauseous. He hoped it didn't show in any way.

"_Are you all right, Kevin? You look a little ill. Is it anything I've said?"_

His mouth dry, Mal just licked his lips. "No, it's… it's fine."

"_Good. Because if information of this kind were to start being thrown about at random, it could be very bad for so many people."_

"I'll fix it."

"_Of course you will. And if you don't, I'll happily lend a hand."_

A wave of panic shot through him. He didn't need those people here, looking over his shoulder. Some of them were suspicious enough already. And he didn't want their predatory instincts interfering anymore than they already had.

"No, it's… it's fine. That won't be necessary. I'll deal with it."

"_Good. We're tracking them now. I'll tell the security forces to co-ordinate with you. Sort this out, Kevin. Mr Icarus doesn't need any of this right now."_

He just nodded, and terminated the connection. Why bother saying goodbye? Manners were for people who at least respected each other. The hatred between Mal and Rom was there for all to see. He had heard rumours of a betting pool among the crew about who would punch out who first.

At the moment, Kevin Mal was willing to put quite a bit of money on himself.

* * *

"Are you lost?"

"I'm not lost."

"You look lost."

"I'm _not lost._ If I was lost, I would stop and ask for directions."

Diane snorted. "Men never ask for directions. Or help of any kind."

"I'll have you know I have stopped and asked for directions _many_ times."

"How many?"

"What?"

"How many times?"

"I'm over nine hundred years old. Do you _really _think I can remember how many times-"

"Doctor."

"Yeah?"

"How many?"

"…five."

"Ha! You see?"

"Look, the point is, when I'm really truly _honestly_ lost, I'm not beneath asking for help. I just don't need it most of the time. And besides, how can you tell if I look lost or not? It's pitch black down here."

Diane sighed. "All right, fine. You're not lost."

The Doctor looked in the direction he could hear her voice coming from. "Besides, _you _should be concentrating on seeing if you can read my mind or not."

"Is it something to be worried about?"

He shrugged, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver and portable map. "Not really," he said, activating the map and manipulating it to remove the buildings and roads and show him the motorway beneath. "I'm just curious."

"Curious about what?"

"Whether it's _you _influencing the telepathy, or the Hollow Star. You may just be psychic when you're up there."

She made a curious 'hm' noise that reminded him a little of Romana. Well, the second Romana. Technically the same Romana, but her second face. Blimey, Time Lords were complicated sometimes.

"There we go," he murmured, and he felt her presence over his shoulder. The blue glow of the map illuminated them both as he pointed. "See? The motorway."

"And where are we?"

"Somewhere… in the motorway…"

She groaned. "Doctor…"

"Look, just… calm down. While it's true that males of most species refuse to ask for directions, it's equally true that females don't really give the males a chance to find their own way. It's always 'Ask for directions' as soon as you get to the seaside resort. They never think that maybe the man has a good idea of where he's going anyway, that _maybe _he's been there before, and that he might-"

"All right, all right, God… I'll never mention anything about asking for directions again."

"Thank you," he said, nodding proudly. "As it happens, though, I haven't got a clue where we are. Like I said, I was up _there_ when I was here last time. This was filled with fumes and smog, I never saw it. Martha did, although she was in a car and surrounded by Macra-" He slapped a hand against his forehead, yelling loudly.

"Thick! Thick! Diane, I've got a brain like bad rice pudding!"

"What, what?"

"Life signs," he murmured, slipping the map away and changing some settings on the sonic screwdriver. "Ah HA! Macra!"

"But you told me the Macra didn't live here anymore."

"That's what I was told…" He concentrated on following the readings. "That way…"

She followed behind as he wandered. "Aren't Macra giant crab monsters? And didn't you say they weren't friendly? I remember you saying that."

The Doctor scowled. "Don't call them monsters. Aliens, fine, I suppose, that's sort of a neutral term. But monsters implies they're bad."

"Well… aren't they? I thought you said they used humans as slaves."

"You're not exactly perfect either, you know," he said quietly, going through a doorway and down some stairs. The sonic screwdriver just barely gave them enough light to see where they were going. "Humans have had slaves, too."

"Excuse me, but where I come from, humans have moved on from slavery."

"Tell that to the Ood…"

"What?"

"Ah! There we are. Macra life signs, just through this door." He unlocked it with the screwdriver, but found the door still jammed. Frowning, he slammed it with his palm a few times.

"What is it?"

"It's jammed. We'll have to-"

Diane thrust a booted foot into the door, sending it crashing open with a metallic clang.

"-kick it open," he finished.

There was slightly more light coming in from somewhere above them in the vast chamber ahead. It looked like another section of the highway. Except the Doctor couldn't feel any wind. The air was stale, musty. Old.

"If you were by yourself, would you have seriously tried to find another way around?"

He shrugged, staring at his feet self-consciously. "Well… I've got nice shoes, I don't like kicking things with them."

"For a big space adventurer, you're a bit of a girl."

"Oi-ya! Masculinity isn't always defined by how big your forearms are, you know."

"Good thing too, where you're concerned."

"Oh, yes, let's move on to the skinny jokes. 'God, you're skinny, this wouldn't fit a rat', 'Hug him and you get a paper cut', on and on. Honestly Donna, you-"

He stopped himself and looked anywhere but at Diane.

"What did you call me?" she asked, although there wasn't any maliciousness behind the question. It just sounded curious.

"Donna. Doesn't matter. Anyway, Macra, dead ahead."

She sidled up to him, sounding playful as she spoke. "Who's Donna?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Friend?"

"Can we just-"

"Family?"

"Look, honestly-"

"Lover?"

He whirled around to face her, this time fully aware of how uncomfortably close he was putting his face to hers.

"Stop it," he hissed. "Right now."

But she didn't. She just straightened up a little, forcing him to move his head back.

"That's it, isn't it? Donna was-"

"No. She wasn't." He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and ran some redundant scans, moving onwards into the darkness. As he walked forward, he found that they were stood on a platform overlooking the highway. He couldn't see the ground beneath them in the dim light. He searched his pockets for something to drop down.

"Of course she wasn't."

"She wasn't," he said irritably. "Donna was… she was brilliant. Amazing. But we were never anything like that."

"Why not?"

"It just… I never do that. Not anymore."

"For how long?"

He scowled, his search through his coat pockets on pause for the moment. "Does it matter?"

"I suppose not."

The Doctor held his glare on her for a few moments more before finally fishing out a clockwork mouse. He hadn't seen this since Messaline. Him, Donna and Jenny. The perfect team.

"Did you want to? With Donna, I mean."

"I never thought about it."

"What? Ever?"

He shook his head. "Not with Donna."

"… but with someone else? Who?"

He didn't say anything, merely rolling the mouse around in his hand. The Doctor didn't want to throw it away. He put it back in his pocket and looked for something else.

"A she? A he?" She waited for a reply, but he didn't give one. "Oh God, it wasn't Jack, was it?"

"Okay, _now _you have to stop. That's just wrong on… _cosmic _levels."

"Never would have guessed you were the kind to be _against _anything, Doctor."

"Oh, I have no problem with same-sex relationships. But Jack… no, no… just… no."

"So it's just sex in general you don't like?"

"Who said I don't like sex?" He found a cricket ball. The Doctor looked it over in his hand. He couldn't recall if it was some leftover from John Smith or from far older days. Cricket jumpers, Australian air hostesses and Time Lords in funny hats.

Diane stared at him. "You are one of the most contradictory men I have ever met."

"Not really. I like sex just fine, and, I'll have you know, am more capable at it than you could possibly imagine. Nine hundred years of experience? You should be so lucky."

He decided the cricket ball could be sacrificed. If it belonged to John Smith, he didn't really want it, and if it belonged to a younger version of himself, well… he had plenty more where this one came from. The Doctor walked to the edge of the platform and held out his arm.

"So… if I asked, would you?"

"Nah. You're not my type."

She sidled up next to him, moving close to his face and glancing down at his lips in a way he found very familiar. Cassandra had done that look when she was in Rose's body. Astrid, too. He couldn't count the amount of times Jack had done it.

"And… what is your type?" she said delicately.

He moved even closer to her, putting his mouth near her ear.

"Not you," he breathed.

Diane drew her head back, looking surprised. Grinning madly, the Doctor dropped the cricket ball.

They waited. Just a few seconds later, the ball hit the ground.

She looked up at him. "How far down is that?"

The Doctor took a breath. "Well-"

A roar interrupted him, quickly followed by more. More noise emanated from below, echoing around the chamber and surrounding them.

He shrugged. "Probably doesn't matter. Seems I hit a Macra. And I don't think they're cricket fans."

* * *

(A/N: It was quite refreshing to write the Doctor having a frank discussion about sex. For obvious suitability and censorship reasons, the best the new show can do is innuendo and sly winks, which works fine for Nine and Ten's flirty natures, I suppose. I think it helps that he's got Diane prodding him about it, since she's one of the most sexually charged characters from the _Who _universe. The only other people who could really confront him about these things are Jack or River Song. But the former reveres the Doctor too much to ever broach the subject seriously, and the latter… well, she's a can of worms I really don't want to mess with until I see what Moffat does with her and Eleven.

Anyway, thanks for the reviews! Keep them coming!)


	7. The More You Know

-1Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who. _For shame.

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Chapter Six: The More You Know…**_

Mal had switched to pills now. The pain reducer worked on some pain, but this was getting to ridiculous proportions. His Catkind nurse had recommended against the dosage he was taking, but Mal was beyond caring by this point. The host body wasn't important anymore. If he found the woman and the Doctor, he would be able to get inside the Star and he wouldn't even need this weak body anymore.

The monitors in front of him flickered for a moment, but a sturdy glare in their direction stopped any fuzzy images. There were about ten monitors, each one linked up to a camera attached to a different member of Mr Icarus' security force. They were exploring the Motorway that the Doctor and Mal's good human friend had escaped to, and were following their heat trails.

He sighed and rubbed his forehead, eyes closed.

"_Sir?"_

"Yes?"

But the voice wasn't talking to him. It was a grunt, talking to his commanding officer, Jame. They muttered on about something while Mal took to massaging his temples. He was getting tired of the feeling of the human skull, the skin thinly stretched over it, the strange texture of the eyebrows… horrible.

"_Doctor?"_

Mal almost jumped out his chair. "You found him?"

"_Uh… no. I was talking to you."_

"Oh. Yes, of course. What is it?"

"_The heat trail… it leads right to a wall, then stops."_

Mal looked at the monitors, and frowned. "What?"

"_There's a wall at the end of the trail. It's like they walked to it and just… disappeared. And I can't find any residue teleport traces, either."_

"But there's a doorway right in front of you."

The line crackled. _"Sir?"_

"There's a door. It's right in front of you. There are stairs, can't you see it?"

The soldiers looked at each other confusedly. One of the men knocked his hand on the open space of the doorway, then looked to Jame. He shrugged.

"_No, sir. Just a wall."_

Mal frowned.

"Telepathy."

"_Sir?"_

"Telepathy. Someone or something is influencing your minds, making you think there's wall there when there isn't."

"_I don't think so, sir."_

He clenched his human jaw, the teeth creaking from the strain. "Look, just… bear with me on this. Close your eyes, and just _believe _the wall isn't there. You'll pass right through it."

"_I don't think so, sir."_

"But it's a trick! Don't let them get away!"

"_I'm sorry sir, but scanners show there is a wall here, and so does my hand." _To make his point, he rapped his fist along the open doorway. Apparently, he heard the sound of his knuckles making contact with a wall, because he sounded suitably vindicated. _"You see? A wall."_

Mal sighed. "All right then. Blow a hole in the damn thing. See what happens."

"_Now that's more my speed, sir."_

"Of that I'm sure." He terminated the audio link, and rested back in his chair.

With that, he closed his eyes to shield them from the harsh light of the security office. Hopefully this would all be over soon.

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Diane hoped to God almighty that this would all be over soon. One moment she had been standing _very _close to this alien man who called himself the Doctor but probably had a far sexier real name, the next he had frantically mentioned some signal.

A signal coming from the other side of the room. So, naturally, when the Macra rose up to eat whatever had dropped a cricket ball on their head, the Doctor went for a mad run on top of their shells, using them like stepping stones.

With a cheery wave, he had beckoned her forth, telling her it was just like Super Mario, whatever the hell that meant.

And so here she was, slipping from the back of one Macra and into the waiting pincers of another.

A skinny yet surprisingly sturdy arm latched onto hers and dragged her back up, the pincer snapping at where her heel had just been.

He grinned euphorically, and off they went again, this time side by side and sometimes hand in hand. Occasionally his sneakers would lose traction and she would help him up, other times he would get her to duck at just the right moment to avoid getting her head snipped off.

As they got to the other side, Diane could make out a platform, not unlike the one they had been standing on before. She reached it first, the Macra she stood on tipping backwards as she leapt onto solid ground again.

Looking back, she saw the Doctor looking a little more wide-eyed than normal (which for him was quite an achievement) as he leapt up into the air from the Macra just behind Diane's. His arms whipped up and he grabbed the large pincer of Diane's Macra, using his momentum and swinging his legs forward. He let go and tumbled to the ground beside Diane, rolling and hitting the door with his legs up in the air and his head sideways on the floor.

He laughed madly as she rushed over to him. She knelt beside him, smiling and shaking her head.

"Macra stepping stones!" he yelled, thrusting his legs forward and rolling back up into a standing position. After a little stumble backwards, he shook his head and cricked his neck. "Not suitable for under seventeen's, always wear protective helmets when crossing."

Diane stared at him for a moment before dusting herself off and standing. "Are you actually mad, or do you just pretend?"

"Doesn't really matter, does it? As long as you enjoy it, that's what matters." Satisfied with his answer, he fished out the sonic screwdriver and got to work on the door.

The platform was deep enough that the Macra's pincers couldn't reach them, but Diane still felt a little nervous. It was probably the constant roaring and snarling combined with the ridiculous amount of adrenaline rushing through her body.

Hence, she was the first to go through the door when the Doctor finally got it open with a triumphant 'ha!'.

"You're eager. Could be dangerous here, y'know."

She glanced back at the snarling chamber of Macra. "Danger's all relative."

The Doctor let out an amused grunt, his grin still rock solid. "Right then, let's see what we've got here…"

It was dark again. Diane was getting tired of darkness. She would much rather have some-

Lights sprang into being, dazzling her. She squinted over at the mushy blob that was the Doctor beside her. She couldn't tell if he was affected by the sudden light or not. The way he was talking, it was as if he hadn't noticed a thing.

"Like the Hollow Star," he murmured, probably unaware that she was still in the room.

She blinked madly to clear her vision, and though colours still danced in her eyes, she could make out that the room was incredibly similar to the chamber in the Hollow Star that had housed the Macra. Or whatever those things were that looked like Macra. Which in turn, looked like lobsters (she wasn't going to let that go - so far, most aliens she had come across seemed based on Earth animals or plants).

A major difference, however, was the lack of occupied alcoves.

"Where are they?"

"Not sure," the Doctor said, moving to the column in the centre. He put his ear to it and rapped a finger against the metal. "It's about as old as the Hollow Star, just not as well preserved. Which is fair enough, considering the Star's been untouched for… well, for as long as it's existed, as far as we know."

_You are right._

Diane whirled around. A voice. Coming from everywhere. She looked at the Doctor, who was peering around the room with a curious frown.

He appeared to take a long time to think of a response, before finally shrugging with an almost cheery, "Hello?"

She moved up next to him. "'Hello'? The best you can think of is 'hello'?"

"Well, I can't say much else, can I? Most basic thing about meeting someone for the first time, saying hello. And I know for a fact they said hello in the 1950s, so don't start with me."

_Do not fear me._

The Doctor nodded. "You can hardly blame her for being a bit edgy though, can you? Considering you're lurking about in shadows."

_Not lurking. I will come out._

Movement from a stasis chamber on her right. Unconsciously grabbing the Doctor's arm as it emerged, she watched as a Macra stepped slowly out of the alcove.

"Doctor…"

"Mmm?"

"That's a Macra."

"Mmm."

"Shouldn't we run?"

He shook his head. "Mm-mm."

"Why not?"

"Because it's talking to us."

She frowned, and looked from the Doctor's rigid seriousness to the Macra now stood completely still opposite them. Well, not completely still. Legs fidgeted, mandibles clicked… but idle. Nothing aggressive.

Well, yet.

The Doctor gently removed her hand from his coat and put his hands in his pockets. "Sorry, introductions. I'm the Doctor, this is Diane Holmes."

Diane gave it a shaky nod, smiling awkwardly.

_J'orj._

She blinked and looked to the Doctor, and back again. "_George_?"

_No. J'orj._

"That's what I said."

"No, no," the Doctor said quietly. "_J'orj._ Jay-apostrophe-oh-ar-jay. J'orj."

After a brief moment of staring at one another, Diane just shook her head. "Still sounds like George to me."

"Fine, you call him George. Nice little nickname, George. But we're sort of pressed for time, so!" He whipped his head around, wild hair shaking from the movement. "J'orj. Are you a member of the Macra species?"

_Yes._

"Did you create the Hollow Star?"

_I do not understand._

The Doctor ducked his head, as if not quite hearing George. "The Hollow Star? The device that's pretending to be the star of this planet right now?"

_Ah. The Tal'ha._

"Yes, well the Tal'ha." He looked at her. "I told you it was probably called the Tal'ha, didn't I, Diane? Anyway, did you create it, J'orj?"

_I was… involved in the construction._

"'Involved'? What does that mean, 'involved'? Either you built it or you didn't."

Seeing how increasingly in-depth this conversation was about to get, Diane decided to stay out of it as best she could, walking to the centre column and leaning against it. It was nice to get some rest. At least, as much rest as someone could with a giant talking lobster in the room.

The Doctor cut off any response George was about to make.

"Oh… _you _didn't make it. Your slaves did."

For a giant lobster, it managed to look somewhat ashamed. It must have been the way the waving eyestalks cast themselves downwards.

_Regrettably so._

"Yes, I'm sure," the Doctor mumbled, and Diane couldn't quite tell what was in his tone. Sadness? Anger? Maybe a bit of both. Either way, he didn't seem at all forgiving.

He took a breath. "What is the Tal'ha, then? What's it for?"

_It is a weapon._

"How?"

_It can become a supernova at will._

The Doctor's face contorted across several emotions, going from amazement to impressed to outrage to disbelief in a few seconds.

"At will? That's… brilliant and horrifying at the same time. Brillifying? Horrilant? Hmm…"

Sighing, Diane pushed herself from the central column. Arms crossed, she looked to George.

"But why are there frozen Macra on board?"

George paused, his eyes going from her to the Doctor.

_Frozen?_

"Oh, she means stasis," he said, sounding so very badly put upon by her presence. "Good point though, why are there Macra on board?"

_They are not Macra._

"Ah! See? I thought so. Not Macra, I said. So what are they?"

_They are the Nikran._

"And they are?"

_Another species. A sister species. Their telepathic field intermingled with ours, unifying, interacting… a perfect union._

It all seemed like so much nonsense to Diane, but she looked over at the Doctor, who predictably, was nodding as if he understood completely.

"Duo-telepathic co-dependency…"

"And… what does that mean?"

He really seemed to think about it for a moment before responding. It was the most considerate thing she had seen him do since she had met him. Usually with these kinds of questions he was short and patronising.

"Fancy term, really. Made it up. Hopefully it'll catch on. Basically it's like the telepathic field in the Hollow Star, except instead of being generated by one source, it's two. One incomplete without the other. I came across something similar once with a species called the Ood. They had a brain in their heads, a separate brain in their hands, and a huge hive brain that linked them all together."

_It is… similar._

"But why are the Nikran on the Star? And why haven't I ever heard of them? I mean, I've only met your people twice, but you think I would have heard some mention of them."

_They are… a closely guarded secret._

"Right," he sighed. With little warning, he planted himself on the floor, legs crossed. "Why don't you tell me about it from the beginning?" The Doctor patted the floor next to him, and Diane took a seat.

George seemed to relax a little, but not enough to sit. If he could sit. Judging from his legs, the best he would probably be able to manage would be an awkward squat.

_Very well. This planet is… was… our home. The planet Macran._

The Doctor raised a hand, like a pupil questioning a teacher. "Um, excuse me, but… this planet is called New Earth."

_Before others arrived, it was Macran._

"Oh. Fair enough."

Sounding a little peeved by the interruption, George continued.

_The Macra and the Nikran lived in harmony. Perfect, blissful. The aggressive, violent field of the Macra tempered by the serene, peaceful field of the Nikran._

_Humans came, many years ago. Found us. They left the Macra, finding nothing useful. But the Nikran… they found them to be a delicacy._

"A delicacy?" Diane asked, a little disgusted.

_Yes. And soon, the Nikran were very nearly gone._

The Doctor's face was hard as rock, but he said nothing, just staring at George.

_The Nikran were outnumbered by the Macra. The aggressive tendencies innate in Macra physiology reigned dominant. We took slaves. Attempted to conquer other planets. That is when you encountered our people for the first time, Doctor. _

"You remember that?"

_Through the telepathic field, we are aware of what others of our species are doing. Your face is very different, and your allies have changed. But it is still your aura. That is what I recognise._

Diane took this in as best she could. The Doctor had said something about different faces, but he blathered on about so much nonsense, she never knew when he was releasing valuable information or just going insane. Not a bad security method as far information went. But the allies comment… that was interesting. It implied to her that he travelled with more than one person at a time. A Doctor entourage.

_Eventually, the Tal'ha was created. Our ultimate weapon._

_The last of the Nikran managed to secure themselves within the Tal'ha, and commandeered it, activating the defences as their final act of life._

"Not quite," the Doctor muttered.

_Of course, now I am aware of the Nikran aboard the Tal'ha. I thank you for that._

He ignored the Macra's gratitude. "So… what happened then? After the Nikran had sealed off the Tal'ha to you?"

_We assumed the Nikran were dead. But, as time passed, the Macra began to lose their intelligence. It soon became apparent that with no Nikran influence of any kind, the Macra would become the wild creatures they had been millennia ago. The last few intelligent Macra sealed themselves here, below the planet's crust._

_The primitive Macra were safely buried beneath the planet, free to live in the darkness and the burrows as their ancestors had done._

_But then others came, and, finding the planet uninhabited, began their work._

"New Earth was born," the Doctor added, looking like he was picking something out of his teeth with his tongue.

_We remained in stasis until a surge of energy coursed through the tunnels around us, some of it spreading into the stasis chamber and freeing us. However, the surge also took the lives of the other Macra. I am all that remain. Even now, I can feel my intelligence slipping away, leaving me one thought at a time._

A wince had managed to worm it's way onto the Doctor's face. "That was me," he said, painfully. "The motorway was locked up, the entire population of the planet was trapped in the tunnels. They're not like the Macra, they need the sun and the sky around them. I… well, a friend of mine - a friend of Diane's as well, actually - sent a surge of energy to open the doors. We didn't know. I'm sorry."

_There is no need for an apology._

"No, but I really am," he insisted, jumping to his feet and walking over to the Macra. He placed a gentle hand on the front of the Macra's shell, reaching up to touch it.

"I am so sorry."

George was silent for a moment. _Thank you._

The Doctor smiled. "Don't thank me yet. I haven't even got you onto the Tal'ha."

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As the flash of light from the teleporter subsided, the Doctor latched onto Diane's arm to steady her. She put a hand to her head, blinking widely a few times to clear her vision. She nodded silent thanks before looking around in awe.

The look slowly transforming Diane's face was one of the many reasons the Doctor loved meeting people and showing them new places. The look of joy, amazement… one of the purest things one could ever see. Over nine hundred years of travelling in space and time, and it never got old. He hoped it never would.

They were in a space-port, the whole thing feeling like an odd cross between a car park and an airport. While there was little need for runways, there were blastoff pads to prevent aftershocks and such from damaging the other ships. While not in use, the ships were kept in bays not dissimilar to the aforementioned car parks, right down to the white painted lines between each ship.

That was where they were now, standing in the middle of a long stretch of ships, going as far down in front of them as the eye could see. Sunlight poured down through the gaps between ships. He stretched a hand out into the sunbeam, an amazed smile stretching across his face.

"Doctor… what are you doing?"

"Look at that. I'm being warmed by artificial sunlight. An _artificial _sun. That's… brilliant. Amazing! I mean, just think about the logistics of it. It… well, to quote myself, it's fantastic."

Diane seemed a little put-out by his fascination (as so many of his travelling companions did), and cleared her throat a little.

"So," she said, looking up and down the bay, "what are we doing here?"

Yes. Quite right. On to business. The Doctor retracted his hand and put it in his pocket, extracting the sonic screwdriver.

"We're looking for a ship so we can pick up George… _J'orj_ and take him to the Star."

"Isn't it called the Tal'ha?"

"Yeah, but Hollow Star just sounds better, doesn't it? More adventurous."

She smiled and shook her head, looking at the ship closest to hers. The Doctor walked into the middle of the bay, holding up the sonic screwdriver. He had set it to run through as many security frequencies from this period as possible; hopefully it would pickup on one of the ships around him and-

Something beeped a few ships down, like central locking on an expensive car. He nodded in the direction of the ship to Diane, and off they went.

"Who was the friend?"

"Hm?"

"The friend who sent the surge of power. You said I knew him too."

"Oh. Jack. It was Jack. Although he was called the Face of Boe by that time."

"Why?"

"Because he was… a big face. In a jar."

"You're kidding."

He looked at her. "Yes, because of all the things you've heard and seen today, _that _is by far the most unbelievable," he drolled.

Diane sighed and nodded. "Point taken."

They went into the ship via a hatch at the back. Nobody home. Good. The ship belonged to a travelling brass band, and the storage area of the instruments looked big enough to accommodate J'orj. Once the instruments were teleported out, of course.

On his way to the bridge, Diane trailing behind in utter fascination of everything around her, the Doctor couldn't help but feel a little tickled about the concept of a brass band travelling the galaxies in the year five billion. It would make a brilliant cartoon.

Once on the bridge, it was simple enough to teleport the instruments to the ground outside. The Doctor tapped away on the touch-screens all over the rather functional looking control centre, peripherally aware of how Diane was settling into the pilot's seat a little too eagerly.

"Don't get any ideas…"

"What? I'm a pilot."

"Of planes. In the 1950s. This is a space cruiser from the year five billion. So, just to warn you, there may be _slight _differences in the controls."

"Couldn't hurt to try, though…"

The Doctor looked over at her, trying to fix her with a glare. But the sheer daring of what she was asking thrilled him too much to hold on to any kind of stern expression.

"Too right."

Using the ship's comm system, he sent a signal to J'orj with co-ordinates. Using the teleporter from the stasis chamber that he had used to send them to the surface, J'orj flashed into the existence in the storage bay below, which the Doctor saw through surveillance cameras. The Doctor bounced into the seat next to Diane's.

"Right! We're off to see the wizard. Now, if you want to take care of the steering, I'll make sure everything is working properly. Capishe?"

Diane nodded, hands gripping the controls. "Capishe."

The Doctor took a pensive breath. "Hi-ho silver…"

Ignition. They didn't really have time to move to a landing platform, not half because of the need to talk to the control tower, something he _really _didn't enjoy and would no doubt have failed miserably at.

The G-forces, while massively reduced by dampeners and so many other bits and pieces of technology, was still noticeable, and the Doctor clutched the armrests of his chair as they rose up out of the atmosphere. Diane's grin was a sight to behold, her arms shaking from the effort of keeping the ship in a straight line.

"FUN?" he asked over the noise of the engine.

"FUN!" she confirmed.

And then, after a fine mist of clouds, they were in space. The rumbling stopped. Diane breathed, and looked over at the Doctor.

"I…" she swallowed, catching her breath before continuing. "Thanks for that."

"Well, you-"

The ship suddenly veered off to the right, and they both latched onto their chairs to stop themselves tumbling out of them and all over the bridge.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Diane cried, and the Doctor could see the controls working themselves.

The ship levelled out, and the Hollow Star could be seen through the front viewport. He clambered to a control panel and logged in. A red flashing box informed him he had been locked out.

_Doctor._

He frowned. "J'orj?"

_Goodbye._

And with a flash of teleporter light, the Doctor and Diane were left floating in space, the ship continuing without them.

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(A/N: Sorry for not updating in so long, but it should be a bit more regular now. Anyway, keep on reviewing, people, it's much appreciated!)


	8. Feint, Jab, Dodge

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Chapter Seven: Feint, Jab, Dodge**_

Diane blinked, her vision smudgy. She remembered being at the controls of the ship as it veered wildly out of control. She remembered the Doctor shouting George's name.

Then there was a flash of light, and this all encompassing _pressure _everywhere. She had felt it only once before, when she had first arrived here. The first time, she had been rescued by Kevin Mal. Of course, rescue was such a subjective term when it was promptly followed with interrogation and torture.

This time, though, she was rescued by…

Her vision cleared enough to see that she was in her old cell. Or something that looked a lot like it. But she wasn't alone. The Doctor sat on the bench opposite her, leaning back and staring at something to Diane's right. She looked over.

It was Mal.

The lights she had come to associate with what Mal called a 'force field' were shining brightly, but she didn't care. She hurled herself at him.

"You-"

The Doctor grabbed her roughly by the arms, trying to pull her back.

"Diane-"

"Bastard, Mal!"

"Would you-"

"You're not keeping me this time!"

"Just-"

"I'll kill myself before that happens, you hear?"

"ARGULBLAR FLAMFLOOZLE!"

She ducked from the volume of the Doctor's voice, and she looked over to see him stopping in mid frantic wave, his arms all over the place.

"Is that… some alien language?"

He dropped his arms. "No, just thought it would get you to stop. Although it is disturbingly close to the Raxacoricofallapatoriun words for 'melted cheese'. Odd." That seemed to distract him a little, but he blinked the thought away after a few seconds. "Anyway, if you could stop venting for a minute and let Mr Mal speak…"

She pointed an accusatory finger at Mal. "After what _he's _done?" she cried, not caring how loud the small cell was making her voice. "Why should I?"

"Because he's a Macra."

She stared at him. "Excuse me?"

"Him," he said simply, nodding at Mal. "He's a Macra."

Diane frantically looked to Mal, who was staring blankly at the Doctor. She looked back to her alien companion.

"Doctor. Macra are big crab things."

He rolled his eyes and groaned. _"Yes, _I realise he's not _physically _a Macra, but up here," he said, emphatically tapping his head with his finger, "he's very much a big crab thing."

The Doctor slipped his hands into his pockets and faced Mal. "I wouldn't have recognised the psychic signature if I hadn't already met J'orj, but now that I have, it's clear as day. You're a Macra."

Mal's eyes darted from the Doctor to Diane a few times before he finally sighed, his eyes closed. He rubbed two fingers against his temple.

"Yes, I'm a Macra. But my colleagues _don't _know, and the deactivated listening devices in here intend to keep it that way."

Diane felt like she needed to sit down, so she did. She was finding it difficult to have a coherent thought, so she just listened as the Doctor talked.

"What's your name?"

"Kev'n."

"Kevin?" Diane asked.

The Doctor frowned at her. "No, _Kev'n. _Kay-ee-vee-apostrophe-en. Kev'n."

"Still sounds like Kevin to me."

"Fine, you call him Kevin, nice name, Kevin, I knew a plumber called Kevin, lovely man. So! Kev'n," the Doctor announce cheerily, planting himself on the bench opposite Diane's, "tell us all about it."

Reluctance flashed across Mal's face.

"All right." Tension receded from his shoulders, if only slightly. "I don't know how much J'orj has told you, but I'm assuming you know about the Nikran and the telepathic field harmonies."

The Doctor nodded. "Yup, check. The last few intelligent Macra put themselves in stasis. And I'm guessing," he said slowly, "you were one of them."

Mal nodded back. "Myself, J'orj, and one other Macra. When the stasis was interrupted by the surge of energy from above, the other Macra died."

As Mal paused in silent remembrance of his dead comrade, Diane couldn't help but notice the Doctor's ever-so-slight wince.

The Macra-in-disguise took in a shuddery breath. "Which left myself and J'orj as the only survivors. But, together, we made a plan; get into the Hollow Star, and try to use the Nikran inside to do something about the condition of the Macra. It was simple enough to access the computer systems of the planet and learn everything there was to know about New Earth. I was to transplant my consciousness into a new host body. A human host body. And I did so."

"The real Kevin Mal," the Doctor muttered.

Mal - Diane decided it was easier to think of him as Mal - nodded again, a little more solemnly. "I integrated myself into the culture, created the ruse that the Macra had returned home, and became a research scientist. But the new host… I didn't have access to the Macra telepathic field. The human body is simply too mentally fragile. It became apparent to me that if I tried to use my telepathic abilities, the host would die. Violently. And… without the telepathic field…"

The Doctor nodded. "It had no influence. Thinking clearly for the first time in your life."

"I decided that our initial plans of finding the Nikran to return us to our intelligent, war-mongering state was futile. So I altered the plan. Now, I simply want to find information about the Nikran so I can access their telepathic field and find some way of duplicating it, transmitting it across all of Macran. Sorry, New Earth."

The Doctor twitched ever-so-slightly. "Sounds a bit like brainwashing to me."

"But it's not, don't you see?" Mal pleaded, coming dangerously close to the force field. "It's just returning the Macra to the way they were always meant to be; their natural state! I…"

His eyes glistening, Mal took a sombre step back. "I know I have no right to ask this, of either of you… but I need your help."

Diane didn't bother to stop the scoff.

"Please. I can't get into the Tal'ha without you. I still don't know how you did it," he said half excitedly, sounding a little breathless with wonder.

"But I do."

She wasn't sure when this other person had entered the room, but he seemed to slide into view as though floating. Maybe he was. In this world, she couldn't discount the possibility.

He was a skinny man, not unlike the Doctor in build, but everything seemed… sharper, harder. His neatly pressed clothes without a wrinkle out of place were quite the contrast to the mismatched and crumpled mess the Doctor wore.

And when he spoke, it was quite a different experience to listening to the Doctor. This man made Diane shudder just by speaking. And not in a good way.

"Listening devices in their escape pod," he said, speaking to Mal as though she and the Doctor weren't even there.

He pointed a bony finger at the Doctor, who looked suitably innocent and angelic.

"It was him. He detected some kind of field. 'Telepathic' is what you said, I believe?"

That one was directed at the Doctor.

The Doctor just shrugged. "I _could_ have said that, I suppose. I say a lot of things. Never stop talking, me, one of my favourite things. Just ask her, she knows. Only known her for a day and I've done _nothing_ but witter on, blah-de-blah blah. Honestly, I think it's a wonder anyone wants to be around me at all."

The man in the suit stared at him. "You're going to do it again, or we will shoot her."

Everything that had been relaxed about the Doctor before became tense in the space of a second.

"Sorry?"

Patiently and insidiously, the man smiled. "You're going to get us into the Hollow Star, or we will shoot this woman. Or you. The head, the leg… well, just somewhere that would either kill or hurt a lot, you get the idea."

The Doctor chewed the inside of his cheek, as though contemplating it. "I see."

As he heaved himself to his feet, a sigh escaped the Doctor that seemed to say he had done this many times before.

"All right. Take us to the Star."

Diane and Mal shared the same expression.

"What?" they said.

Looking a little amused by their synchronicity, the Doctor settled his gaze on Diane. "I'm taking them to the Star. Shouldn't be a problem."

She jumped to her feet. "But you said-" Her words caught in her throat as she noticed Mal and the other man listening intently.

The Doctor noticed what she was doing and rolled his eyes. "Oh, for-" he groaned and looked over at them.

"It'll probably kill me doing this." She looked back to her. "See? They don't care. There's nothing we can do. I've still got my sonic screwdriver, so I'm assuming they've got technology here dampening anything I could do to escape. They'll kill me anyway, so… might as well stop you from being shot."

Words failed her for a moment. "W- I… that's very _nice_, but what's to stop them shooting me after you've killed yourself getting them inside?"

He seemed ready with a quick response, but then thought about it, gazing off into the distance. "Ah. Have to admit, I hadn't thought about that. Oh well, have to risk it."

The Doctor turned and lay down on his bench, lacing his hands across his stomach and crossing his legs. She got ready for another loud rebuttal when he stopped her with a look.

"Look, if I die… just think of it as spilt milk. No use crying over it."

The businessman smiled. "Good man."

With that wonderful comment, he left the room, eventually followed by a supremely guilty looking Mal.

Diane collapsed back onto her bench, and stared at the blissfully restful face of the Doctor, eyes closed and humming a little tune.

"You've got a plan, don't you?"

"I've always got a plan. Well, except for the times when I don't. Like now."

"So you're… really going to kill yourself?"

"Probably."

"And you're okay with that?"

He frowned a little. "Death… doesn't really mean the same thing for me as it does for you."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, if you wait and see you'll find out, won't you?" He said, sounding like he was scolding an impatient child. "Blimey, you humans, they want everything right here, right now… enjoy the anticipation, the excitement, yeah?"

The humming was back.

"Are you mad?"

"The Mad_ness_, actually. A few decades into your future. Called 'Our House'. Great song, I love it. Went to see them live in 1984. 1985, 1984...? Can't remember. Ace liked them."

Diane leant back and rubbed the side of her head. "So you _are _mad."

"Why am I mad?" he challenged, sounding defensive.

"Because you're going to die, and you don't care!"

Unimpressed by that answer, he gave her a thoughtful look. "Maybe _you're _the insane one for caring about whether you live or die, you ever think of that?"

Through her incredulous staring, something finally clicked in Diane's head.

"Doctor," she said, slowly and carefully, "do you _want_ to die?"

The Doctor didn't reply for a long time. Or move. He just lay there on the bench, relaxed and frozen at the same time.

He took a breath.

"You know what? It was1984."

* * *

Kev'n rarely saw people so calm in the face of their own death. He had seen others happily dole it out, but there were few who had come up against it as easily as this Doctor was doing.

He almost seemed cheery about the fact, like it was just another experience, another dish to taste, a new tourist attraction. He particularly seemed fascinated by the shuttle itself, wide eyes taking in every flashing light and beeping console. Even the half a dozen guards seemed to hold some vague curiosity for him.

"Are we there?" he asked curiously, looking past Diane and straight to Kev'n. "You haven't dragged me out here for nothing, have you?"

The woman seemed rather annoyed by his flippant attitude, the scowl a permanent fixture on her face as she glared at as many people as humanly possible.

Mr Rom, ever-so-slightly flummoxed by the Doctor's blasé approach to his imminent death, nodded at a Crespallion guard, who activated the large view screen at the front of the shuttle.

"We're coming up on the Star now."

"Tal'ha," the Doctor corrected politely, eyes on the screen as the ship approached. They hadn't slowed, and the shuttle was now firmly within the Tal'ha's gravity. If the Doctor _couldn't _get them inside, they were all dead anyway.

Mr Rom snatched a gun from the holster of a nearby guard and pointed it at Diane, then shot her in the arm. The Doctor cried out as loudly as if he had been the one shot.

"No!"

The woman crumpled to the ground, clutching the scorched and bleeding wound before looking up at Rom with eyes that would have crushed a lesser man. Not that Kev'n thought much of Mr Rom. He would just as soon break the man's neck as shake his hand.

For emphasis, Rom took a step towards Diane, shaking the gun a little in her direction.

The Doctor put up his hands. "All right, all right, just… leave her alone. All right? I'm doing it. I'm doing it! Watch."

He turned, eyes closed, and put his shackled hands to his head. They were nearly in the sun now. Sensors bleeped as they warned the nonexistent crew about their imminent deaths.

And then the Doctor screamed, and there was a white flash, very different from the intense yellow glow of the star.

Everything was dark. Kev'n blinked the flashing lights from his eyes, furiously trying to recover before anyone else and ascertain where he was. Their sensors had tracked J'orj's approaching the Tal'ha before exploding on impact. He was somewhere onboard, and Kev'n needed to be wary of him. As much as Kev'n was J'orj's superior on the psychic plane, any confrontation now would end _very _quickly. In as much time as it took J'orj to snip his claws, in fact.

As his vision returned, he found that it wasn't as dark as he had first assumed. There were some lights at the top of the mountainous corridors. A flood of nostalgia came over him, the Macra architecture bringing back such memories.

"Doctor?"

It was Diane, sounding uncharacteristically quiet and meek. He looked over in her direction, where she was crouched beside the inert body of the Doctor. As he walked over to them, however, he noticed something odd about the Doctor's flesh.

It was glowing yellow.

"What in…"

Diane whirled around, grabbing him by the lapels of his white coat. "Do something! He helped you get in here, now do something!"

He stared past her, at the Doctor's glowing body. "What's happening?"

"I don't know," she said desperately, releasing him and moving closer to the Doctor. "This didn't happen before. He just said that if he did that again, he would die. Maybe this is what happens when he dies."

"Perhaps…" Kev'n muttered, kneeling on the other side of his body. The Doctor _looked _dead, certainly. But the glow indicated some kind of unconscious reaction. Some kind of renewal of the cells, perhaps? The energy such a transformation would take, though… Kev'n had never heard of species that could accomplish such a thing.

"Come on!" Diane cried, tears welling.

Kev'n looked at her, truly taking in her desperation. Through all the distasteful interrogations and questionings she had been exposed to, Kev'n had never seen these kinds of emotions brought to the surface in Diane. It seemed that emotional fortitude was relative for humans.

He reached inside his coat, and pulled out the cellular re-composition matrix he had been putting together. He had hoped to use it on himself if he had been forced to use his psychic abilities to their fullest; it would have allowed him to maintain his current form, but still use his powers.

But it could only be used once. Only enough energy to save one person; one life.

Diane was clutching the Doctor's hand. The glow from the man lying between them was intensifying, his features becoming slightly more nondescript through the glow.

Kev'n activated the device, and lay it on the Doctor's forehead. The blue glow from the device merged with the yellow, a green aura slowly spreading out across the man's body. Kev'n gestured for Diane to step back, and she did so.

Rom's men were gathered around, watching the light show that blazed in front of them. Even Mr Rom himself was speechless.

The green light became a pure blue, and, finally, the matrix device fizzled out, leaving the Doctor lying on his back. The pale, faded colours of his clothes and flesh were dull and lifeless compared to magnificence that had just surrounded the man.

There was silence in the corridor for a few moments, before Diane crept over to the Doctor and knelt down, cradling her arm.

"Doctor?"

A low, quiet 'Mmm' escaped the Doctor.

"Doctor. Wake up."

"…really, who _doesn't_ like bananas…"

All tension left Diane, and she sighed. Then, with one mighty swoop of her uninjured right arm, she grabbed the Doctor in a place that made all the men groan sympathetically.

The Doctor burst to life, sitting upright and almost violently head-butting Diane. He sat staring down the corridor for a few tense moments, just breathing. Slowly, he turned to look at Diane.

"Diane," he said politely, "I've asked you before. Please don't do that."

She nodded. "Sure. No problem."

They carefully extricated themselves from one another's tangled grasp, and Kev'n helped the Doctor to his feet.

"There now, that's better. Hello!"

A very loud 'what?' was on Kev'n's lips when the Doctor looked down at the matrix device, now burnt out on the floor.

"Ha! I knew it!" He scooped up the device, and, noticing his hands were still bound, did a complicated twist of his wrists that left the cuffs clattering to the floor. His freedom nonchalantly gained, he slipped some glasses out from his coat. "Cellular re-composition matrix device. I thought you'd have one of these, what with that massive Macra brain crammed into a human head…" A big grin popped out of nowhere. "And hand-held, too! That… _that_ is brilliant. And for me to say that, well, that's saying something."

He handed it back, and Kev'n took it gingerly, slipping the inert device back into his lab coat. The Doctor went back to Diane.

"Are you all right?"

She stared at him in amazement, blinking away tears. "Fine."

"What's wrong with your eyes?"

Self consciously rubbing her eyes, Diane glared at the floor. "Nothing, I'm fine, I just got shot, it hurts, shut up."

The Doctor stared at her a for a few moments, contemplating the defensive barrage. "Yeah, sorry about you getting shot, didn't mean for that to happen."

"I'm sorry, but…" Kev'n announced, stepping forward, "…_what_ just happened?"

The Doctor frowned at him curiously. "Hm? Oh, well, I've met more than a few escape artists in my time, and frankly, those cuffs are pure rubbish, you should really talk to-"

"No, I mean… when you were dead. Dying. Whatever!"

"Oh, don't worry about it. Happens when I'm close to death. Or dead. The end result should have been something _very _different, but that device of yours repaired the damage before the process could be completed."

"Oh, I, er… sorry?"

The Doctor waved it away. "Nah, it's all right. I'm sure I'll get to die some other time. Not too keen on the idea at the moment, if I'm honest."

Kev'n struggled to understand what he meant. "I… I'm really not sure what you're talking about. You mean you can survive death? Was that the glow? Some kind of… regeneration of the cellular structure?"

As he spoke, Diane sidled up beside the Doctor and tapped him on the shoulder, ignoring Kev'n completely.

"Doctor."

"Hm?"

"They've got guns pointed at us," she said simply, poking a finger in the direction of Mr Rom's security contingent.

Kev'n decided to put aside his scientific quandary for the moment.

"Rom," he said calmly, stepping around the Doctor and Diane with his hands up, trying to calm them. "Think sense. This Doctor has been here before. He knows his way around, he knows the systems."

"He also knows far too much about _us_. Step out of the way, or I will have Jame's men shoot you as well."

A louder protest grumbled in his throat when the Doctor lay a calming hand on his shoulder, gently moving him aside so he could come forward.

"Go on then. I dare you. I managed to beat one death today, what's one more?"

Diane, looking very much fond of being alive, almost stomped over to him. "Doctor? What are you doing?" she hissed, teeth clenched.

"Look, just… shush," he said abruptly, putting his finger to his lips.

Before she could retort in suitably loud and vehement fashion, the Doctor was off again.

"Well? You've got guns. Fire, bang, boom, pull the trigger, show me the money, go on!"

They did as they were told. But nothing happened.

The Doctor snapped his fingers theatrically. "Oh, but _that's right_, I forgot! There's a dampening field around the entire Star! Energy weapons won't work inside it. That's clever, isn't it, Diane?"

Breathlessly, she nodded. "Very."

"Now, this, on the other hand," he announced, pulling out what looked like a sonic probe as he went on, "works just fine. It's only a sonic screwdriver, after all, why would the Tal'ha want to negate it? Doesn't kill, doesn't maim, just unlocks doors."

"And locks them again," Diane added, hands now in pockets in a casual manner completely unbefitting the situation. But then again, that suited everything Kev'n had seen of her thus far; even torture neglected to truly change her attitude.

"Yes indeed-y. Another thing it can do, though, is send signals. Just little ones, nothing complicated. Can't text with it, which is really starting to be a bit of a bother…" The thought seemed to distract the Doctor for a moment before he snapped back.

"Diane," he asked, facing Mr Rom and the guards the entire time. "Do you remember when we first got in here, and I was at a terminal?"

"Yes…"

"And I found something that I found interesting but I didn't tell you what it was?"

"You said it was nothing."

"Well, it _was _nothing at the time. But now, well…" He grinned and gave a roundabout look to everyone in the mammoth corridor. "I'll let you all judge for yourselves, shall I?"

He pressed the button. The entire corridor became a distinct shade of mauve and klaxons sounded. A series of clicks sounded from unseen speakers, repeating themselves over and over.

Mr Rom looked decidedly less than pleased. "What's happening? What's it saying?"

The Doctor looked to Kev'n. "What do you think, Kev'n?"

"It sounds like…" he looked to the Doctor desperately. "It sounds like a self destruct."

Enjoying himself far too much, the Doctor took in everyone's terrified looks before finally settling on Mr Rom.

"Oh dear, a self destruct! That _is _a bit of a pickle. And, unfortunately," he said with a pained expression, hissing through his teeth, "I could only find the 'on' switch. You think I would have looked for the 'off' switch at the time, but there you go, memory like a sieve and an attention span like a goldfish. Although I _did _meet two goldfish once who were very well educated about Shakespeare. The opinions they had on Hamlet's relationship with his mother. Oh, they thought they were so original…"

"Doctor?" Diane asked, grabbing his arm. "Self-destruct?"

"Means the Star is going to blow up."

"Yes, I got that, thank you. Why are you turning it on?"

"Diane, this thing, the Tal'ha… it can go supernova at will. That kind of power can't be left to people like them."

"But-"

"Mal!" Rom screamed, struggling to be heard over the klaxons. It was somewhat gratifying to see him panicking at long last. "Fix this!"

"What do you want me to do?"

Exasperated, Rom looked to the Doctor. "Reverse it! Now!"

To emphasise the point, the guards brought up their weapons.

The wiry man put up his hands. "What are you going to do? Shoot at me with your imagination?"

A vein appeared on Rom's forehead. "Mal. How long have we got?"

"About two minutes."

"Really?" The Doctor interjected, looking only mildly interested in the conversation. "I could have sworn it was twenty. Oh, well, my attention span again. Atrocious."

Rom glared at the Doctor, but quickly moved it to Kev'n. "Mal…"

Kev'n moved to a terminal beside him. "Look, maybe I can teleport us out of here. The teleporters are much more powerful here. They should be able to get us to the _Phoenix, _or maybe even New Earth."

"And be trapped on the planet when this thing goes up? No thank you. The _Phoenix_, now." He looked at the Doctor and Diane. "Them too."

There. J'orj's life signs bleeped out at him. But when he attempted to get a teleporter lock, the computer reset, like it didn't want to know. He put it aside for later, and, after glancing over his shoulder at the Doctor and Diane, Kev'n shook his head, working feverishly at the controls.

"Leave them," he said.

"And what if this is some trick?"

"It doesn't matter; now I know how to get us inside, I can synthesise the telepathic response. Like you said. They know too much."

Rom thought about it for about half a second before nodding. "Fine."

"All right. Co-ordinates set for the _Phoenix_."

"Do it."

Kev'n pressed the button, and with a flash of light, Rom and the guards disappeared. After taking a big breath, he looked to Diane and the Doctor, the former staring at him in abject shock and the latter looking thoroughly amused. Although he had been looking thoroughly amused since he came back to life. Kev'n supposed surviving death could do that to a person.

"You sly devil," he admonished.

Ignoring Diane, Kev'n strode over to him quickly. "Give me the sonic probe. I might be able to use it to deactivate the self destruct."

The Doctor extracted it from his coat with an innocent look on his face. He activated it, and the alarms disappeared.

He grinned. "All taken care of."

An angry hand clutched him by the collar and dragged him down, bringing him nose to nose with Diane.

"You said you didn't have the off switch."

The Doctor seemed nonplussed by the seething rage. "Well, I didn't. Not for the self-destruct, anyway."

That gave Diane pause, as well as Kev'n.

"What?" they asked together.

With a look that showed he was enjoying this as much as anything in his entire life, the Doctor went on. "I didn't have the off-switch for the self-destruct. Didn't have the on-switch, to tell the truth. But I did have the switches for the self-destruct _alarm_."

Kev'n stared at him in wonder while Diane did much the same, the two of them vacillating from amazement to anger to shock to wonder in just a few seconds.

"You just did a fire drill," Diane said slowly.

"Fire drill. I like that. Helping save a the world with a fire drill. But yeah, basically. The self-destruct's hidden under layers and layers of security code, there would be no way for me to crack that," he said, making them sound unreasonable for expecting such a thing of him. "Not quickly, anyway."

He looked to Kev'n.

"And where are _they_?"

"On the _Phoenix_, like I said. No more killing."

With the first solemn look Kev'n has seen from him in recent times, the Doctor said, "Good to hear it."

Diane looked to the Doctor. "What now?"

Before the Doctor could reply, Kev'n cut in. "J'orj is still here. I tried to teleport him off, but the computer wouldn't let me."

"Where?" The Doctor moved to the computer. "You use it. The telepathic algorithms give me a cracking headache."

"Right." Kev'n rushed over and got to work. He noted that Diane did not follow.

"You all right?"

Kev'n thought at first that the Doctor was speaking to him, but then quickly realised it was directed at Diane.

"Fine, fine, just… the headaches are back. I can't believe you're still thinking about how brilliant your fire drill plan was."

Frowning, Kev'n turned to face them. "What?"

The Doctor looked reluctant at first, before sighing. "Yeah, she… sort of just… _got_ telepathy when she first arrived in here." He cocked an eyebrow at Kev'n. "Why? Do you know something about it?"

"I think so, but…" The terminal beeped, and Kev'n went back to it. "It'll have to wait. J'orj is at the weapons platform. He's charging for a supernova."

* * *

(A/N: _Torchwood: Children of Earth _is amazing. Exactly what I thought _Torchwood _should have been from the beginning. It's the first time they've dealt with themes that _Doctor Who _just couldn't touch. The four/five minute discussion in Day Four between the politicians… it's been so long since a television show has left me literally holding my breath. The last time was probably the final ten minutes of 'The Stolen Earth'. Russell T Davies, you magnificent bastard.

And the 30 second clip of 'The Waters of Mars'… it's looking equally disturbing, albeit in an entirely different way.

But enough of my jabbering. Reviews, please!)


	9. Showdown at the Macra Corral

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Chapter Eight: Showdown at the Macra Corral**_

Diane almost struggled to keep up with Mal and the Doctor, each stride of their long legs easily forging ahead of hers. But she managed enough speed to keep aware of the situation. From what she understood, George had disabled the teleporters after the alarm had been switched off, leaving them to go the long way to stop him from activating the Star. She wasn't quite sure she could comprehend a star going supernova. Truth be told, she wasn't exactly sure what it meant.

"So what do you know about the telepathy?"

Her ears pricked as the Doctor's voice cut through the corridor.

Mal kept his gaze ahead, taking a sharp turn left at an intersection.

"The Tal'ha gave it to her as you teleported inside. At least, that's my best guess. It was standard procedure for Macra that if our ships were ever disabled or colonies abandoned, another Macra could come along, interact with the telepathic field inside and find out what happened."

Diane surged forward as best she could, poking her head around the Doctor. "But, look at me. I'm not exactly a giant crab, am I?"

The Doctor opened his mouth, and Diane stabbed a warning finger at him. He clamped his mouth shut.

Mal still didn't look at them as he went on. "You were the best on offer when you teleported inside. The Doctor was unconscious as he arrived, not to mention the far more sophisticated and powerful mental blocks he has in place. In comparison, humans are open books."

"True," the Doctor conceded, looking smug briefly before it vanished. "Wait, so she's got a Nikran telepathic field in her head?"

"Yes."

"In her head? Right now?"

"Yes, why?" Mal said irritably, turning right.

The Doctor didn't follow him this time, and Diane stood beside him as he scrounged in his coat pockets, finally pulling out the glowing map he had been using before.

"What are you doing?" Diane asked quietly, only for the question to be repeated far more loudly by Mal, who stormed back over to them.

"Interfacing with the computer… getting a map."

"I know where we're going," Mal said quickly, "the weapons platform. I looked it up on the computer."

"Yes," the Doctor said wearily, "but Diane and I aren't going to the weapons platform."

"But J'orj is-"

"Oh, I know all that, _you're_ still going," he dismissed. His face lit up when a map of the Star came up. "Ah! Right, there's the stasis chamber, and… oof, blimey, there's us."

He looked to Diane. "Don't mind a bit of running, do you?"

She sighed. "Why would I start objecting now?"

A grinning wink was all she got before he returned his attention to Mal. "Right, now, you keep on going to the weapons platform."

"What about you?"

"I've got a plan."

Diane looked at him, disbelief in her eyes. "You? You've got a plan?"

He gave her a profoundly hurt look. "Oi! I've always got a plan. We've known each other for, what-"

"Less than a day?"

"Less than a day, really? Oh. Feels longer."

She grit her teeth, but he kept on blathering.

"Anyway, in that day, have I ever given you any indication that I've not had a plan?"

"You just seemed like you were improvising."

He nodded. "Yeah, right, that's what I said, improvising. That's just planning on the fly. Anyway," he said, looking irritated with himself for the tangent, "Kev'n. You go to J'orj and do what you were going to do. To be honest, Diane and I couldn't do much except cheer you on. Not much we can do against a giant crab." He waggled his free fingers about. "Small hands."

Mal looked a little confused, but just nodded anyway.

"Good luck," he said, and started running in the opposite direction.

The Doctor stared after him for a few moments. "Luck? Good? Me? Honestly, that's halfway offensive…" He looked to her, grinning madly. "But enough of that, let's get to the running, shall we?"

With that, the Doctor shot off down the corridor, holding the map out in front of him like an almighty oracle. Diane sighed, and looked down at her high heel boots.

Bloody running.

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Having long since left the Doctor and Diane behind, Kev'n psychically blocked out the pain coming from his legs and feet as he ran, moving at thumping speeds that would no doubt leave his leg muscles aching for days to come. But, if things went the way he was predicting, even planning a few minutes into the future was optimistic at best.

He darted around another corner as he wondered just how long it had taken him to run this far. As a Macra, these corridors would have been nothing. The Tal'ha, while immense, was still nowhere near as large as the Star it created around itself, and to a Macra would be more like the equivalent of walking the halls of a human skyscraper.

But, finally, his lungs tingling from the exertion (he hadn't bothered to exercise the host body much, which he was now regretting greatly), he reached the weapons platform. The door was, predictably, locked.

Kev'n moved to the control panel beside the towering door, and reached out with his mind. He felt the human brain pulsing painfully as it used part of it's physiology previously untouched by it's natural owner.

The door opened, and Kev'n slipped inside.

The different rooms and chambers of the Tal'ha were all designed with the same plans in mind; a cylindrical chamber with a central column containing the main controls. Anything specific to the room would be contained in the walls that encircled the column. In this case, the walls weren't even walls. Holographic projectors gave an image of everything outside the Tal'ha, giving the illusion of actually walking through space. Kev'n easily ignored the field of stars that replaced the floor, and made his way to J'orj.

His fellow survivor busily activated controls and shifted settings with his mind, preparing the Tal'ha to do what it was always meant to do.

_You shouldn't be here._

Kev'n tried to resist instinctually replying psychically; he wanted this body to survive as long as it could.

"I had to. I wanted to give you a chance."

_A chance? A chance to what?_

"To stop this. The people in this solar system… they don't deserve to die. And our home," he said, pointing to Macran, "contains all that is left of our people. Don't annihilate that because of her."

_Her?_

"You were never particularly good at hiding your emotions. I'm not even connected to the telepathic field, and I know what this is about. I've known you for too long, J'orj."

The Macra stopped his working, and looked at Kev'n mournfully.

_Kar'al still lives, Kev'n. Her mind dissolved and degraded to next to nothing. Now she is just instinct and rage._

"But we can save her!" He came further forward, pleading. "By using the Nikran telepathic field, we can-"

_Change her again? She would be different, Kev'n. She would not be the same Kar'al we knew. None of our people would. Their passion, their desires… they would be gone. Replaced by placid weak-mindedness. Peaceful. It is not the Macra way._

"But, J'orj… it's how we were meant to be."

J'orj stared at him for a few breathless moments.

_I disagree._

He turned back to the control column. The process began, the entire Tal'ha humming and shaking from the energy build-up. Kev'n readied himself. It had been some time since he had used his telepathic abilities with so little restraint, so brazenly. It would be painful.

But then the humming stopped. All systems went into shutdown, only emergency mauve lighting giving the faintest impression of what was going on.

J'orj frantically searched through the systems, looking for an explanation. Kev'n didn't even need to bother thinking about it; the Doctor.

_It started at the stasis chamber. What have you done?_

Kev'n looked at J'orj solemnly. His brother and his enemy; someone he had to defeat and save all at the same time. He doubted anyone had any real idea of the conflict that raged inside of him.

"I honestly don't know."

_The Doctor?_

Kev'n cursed his human brain; his defences kept on dropping. J'orj could only get flashes of his thoughts, but, sometimes, a flash was enough.

His brother worked at the controls, diverting what little power remained into reactivating the teleporters.

_First I will kill him, and then I will come for you. I would rather see the Macra end before they are reduced to simpering weaklings._

"J'orj, please-"

And, in a bright clap of energy, he was gone, taken to the stasis chamber. Kev'n got to work on the computer, trying to get the teleporters back for one more jump. He bypassed the slower, more clumsy manual controls and interfaced with the computer directly with his mind. He felt something inside his head burst painfully.

It was the beginning of the end.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Doctor let out a loud 'woo' as he barrelled into the stasis chamber, the lights still on from when they had visited before. He heard Diane's bare feet padding along behind him, and turned to see her skidding to a halt behind him, boots tucked under her arm.

He threw a glance at her bare feet, and she just shrugged.

"What? I defy _you _to run in heels."

"I'll have you know-" He frowned. "Actually, I'm not sure if I've ever done that."

"You've never lived," she deadpanned, wedging her feet back into the boots. "What are we doing here?"

"Well, first thing you need to understand, being in my head, it's a very odd thing. There's always so many things occurring to me. For example, it only just twigged that the bananas in the TARDIS probably wouldn't go off so fast if I didn't put them underneath the helmic regulator. It _also _occurs to me," he continued, rushing to the central column, "that the telepathic field outside the Tal'ha is slightly different from the one currently in your head."

Diane hopped along as she forced the second boot on. "The one outside? You mean the one that nearly killed you?"

"One and the same," he said, activating the control panel with the sonic screwdriver. "At the moment, it's just an identification signal. A little more complicated than that, of course-"

"Of course."

"-but still, the same basic principle. And yet, it's _still_ a transmitter, and it's a transmitter that's projecting out in all directions, just not very far. Which is fair enough, it doesn't really need to go that far out, it's just to let people in, you don't put a door at the end of the driveway instead of the house, that'd be mad."

He felt Diane coming up beside him, trying to follow what he was doing on the glowing blue monitor. She didn't seem to do well with that.

"So it's a transmitter," she repeated, not sounding too understanding of his logic.

"Yep. And if it was on a different frequency, like the Nikran telepathic field, and had more power that let it cover a wider area, like, say, the Macra on New Earth…"

She stared at him. "You're going to change them back to how they were."

"Well, sort of. It'll be artificial in nature, obviously, so I don't think it'll have quite the same effect. Most likely it'll just give them enough free will to choose for themselves whether to be good or bad instead of having their biology dictate it for them. A lot like the rest of the universe, really."

"You didn't seem to keen on the idea when Mal suggested it."

"The Macra didn't have a choice about what happened to them when the Nikran disappeared. If I believe in anything, it's freedom to choose. So that's what I'm giving the Macra. If they don't like it and want to go back, we can always turn the Star off later."

Something beeped insistently, and he checked it.

"Besides," he added, "J'orj is activating the supernova right about now."

Diane peered over his shoulder as though she were trying to confirm it. "What are you going to do?"

"What we _need _are some Nikran-" he whirled around, and, for the first time, saw that the stasis chambers were off. Inside each alcove, shadows masking their charred remains, lay a deceased Nikran.

The Doctor felt a wave of pity and panic wash through him as Diane looked from him to the bodies and back again. She pointed a wavy finger at one of the Nikran.

"…they're dead."

"I know."

"But-"

"I know!" he snapped, turning back to the control panel. "J'orj must have done it when he arrived. Stasis feedback surge; would have killed every Nikran. Just like what happened to the intelligent Macra on New Earth…"

What disturbed the Doctor the most was how he identified with J'orj. Revenge, payback, an eye for an eye. It was an easy trap to fall into.

Even for Time Lords.

"_We are the same."_

"_We're not the same, I'm not-! No, wait. Maybe we are. Yeah, right, yeah, okay. You've got a point. 'Cause I know what to do. I know what should happen; I know what you deserve."_

_He smiled a cruel, vicious smile. A smile he had never used before. _

"_Exterminate."_

He had been a different man back then, quite literally. But the guilt and rage still pressed on through the different faces. It scared him how easy he found it, and how reliant he was on silly little humans holding him back and keeping him on course.

"Doctor!"

Case in point.

"Hm? Yes, sorry. Supernova! Right! Diane," he said, bringing up the palm of his hand to her face, "I'm afraid this is going to be a bit uncomfortable."

She glanced at his hand as it rested gently on the side of her face. "What are you doing?"

"You've got the Nikran telepathic field in your head. And right now, that's all we've got. If I can… hang on…"

Rolling his shoulders around, the Doctor reached out to the computer system, using the same method of communication that Kev'n and J'orj found so painless. The same pressure headache made him wince, and he hissed through his teeth, closing his eyes and trying to focus. He moved forward, outward, sifted through different systems… methodical, yet not. Mathematical, yet instinctual.

Blimey, telepathy was complicated.

Finally, he found what he wanted. With an 'Allons-y' that he wasn't sure he said out loud or not, the Doctor switched the identification field outside the Tal'ha to the Nikran telepathic field.

He released Diane, and grabbed her arm when she stumbled back a bit. She steadied herself on the column.

"What did you do?" she whispered, rubbing the side of her head.

The Doctor nodded in sympathy, still wincing a little as he worked at the controls with the sonic screwdriver.

"Took the Nikran telepathic field from your noggin and changed the field outside. All we need now is more power to boost the signal!"

"And where's that coming from?"

"Well, J'orj is kicking off a supernova right about now…" He looked up as a low humming filled the room, no doubt coming from the charging sequence for the weapons. He grinned at her.

"How about I take power from those systems? I'm sure he won't mind, he seems like the forgiving sort."

And with a click of the sonic screwdriver, all the power going into the supernova went straight into the transmitter, boosting the signal and sending out it's calming influence over the solar system.

"Is it working?"

The Doctor nodded, looking up to the vast ceiling. "The signal's only boosted enough to reach the edge of this solar system… but that's more than we needed anyway."

"And how do you think George is going to take this?"

"Well-"

A blinding flash interrupted them. Blinking away the dancing lights, the Doctor spotted a rather incensed looking J'orj stood at the entrance of the chamber.

"…he _might _be a bit irritated, yeah."

J'orj took two very dangerous steps forward, pincers eerily still as he approached.

_What have you done?_

The Doctor and Diane both took a step back with each one that J'orj made. It wasn't really making much of a difference as far as distance between them went.

"You mean recently, or just in general? Because if it's the latter, then _blimey _that's a loaded question. Recently, though-"

_The identification field has been changed._

"Um, yes, well-"

_The Nikran field… _

J'orj looked at them both, growing in size with his anger. Which, to be honest, the Doctor found a bit unnecessary. He was bloody enormous as it was, he didn't need to get _bigger_.

_Change it back._

The Doctor stopped backing up. "No."

_Change it back __**now**__._

"The answer's still no. The Macra deserve to choose for themselves."

His telepathic voice boomed in their heads, although Diane seemed more affected by it than the Doctor. She fell to her knees, hands to her head.

_WHAT GIVES YOU RIGHT?_

A little winded by the attack, the Doctor straightened up. "What gives _you_ the right? You can't possibly think that you speak for every Macra down there!"

_I am __**saving **__the Macra!_

"You're saving yourself! Pretending to be all righteous and selfless when really, it's all about what _you _want!"

He remembered standing on that airfield, watching the Master sow his seeds of mass murder and domination, mocking Martha's terrified family.

"_I'm not here to kill him… I'm here to save him."_

"Believe me, I know."

_You know nothing!_

"Oh, but I know enough about you, don't I? You've lost someone." In one of those wonderful moments of epiphany that the Doctor loved so much, things began to click together.

"Or… you _will _lose them if this field is activated. Because they won't be the same person. They won't be controlled by a desire for conquest and control. They'll have a choice. What will you do if that person decides that they don't like death and destruction? Hm? Turn off the field? _Force _your own people to become mindless animals again?"

_Deactivate the field._

"Oh, well, you asked me three times, third time's the charm. I'll turn if off now then, shall I?" The Doctor whipped out the sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the control column. The controls sparked and sizzled as the screwdriver resonated and shook the delicate innards of the computer. Job done, he slipped the tool away again, looking back to J'orj.

"Butterfingers. Pressed the wrong button. Now it's jammed."

A howl of unholy proportions echoed through the chamber, this one in no way telepathic. J'orj charged at them, pincers swiping through the air at them.

The Doctor turned to Diane.

"Run?"

"Run."

They hurled themselves to the other end of the chamber, but despite the not unimpressive distance covered, J'orj still had them beaten stride for stride. Trapped against the wall, the Doctor looked to Diane again.

"Over?"

"Under."

"Over!"

"Under!"

And suddenly, J'orj was upon them, snarling and roaring as he tumbled towards them. The Doctor leapt up, hoping Diane would follow his suggestion and not go with her own initiative. He managed to latch onto one of J'orj's flailing arms just long enough to get his feet up onto his back, where he dove down into a forward roll that took him tumbling off J'orj's back and to the hard metal floor.

A thunderous crash accompanied J'orj's collision with the wall, chunks of metal and circuitry collapsing as his momentous weight smashed through.

The Doctor blinked, looking up at the ceiling when Diane's silhouetted head moved into view.

"What is it with you and climbing over monsters?"

He swung his legs up so his feet were pointing in the air before slamming himself upright into a sitting position. The Doctor shot up to his feet from there, hopping a little as he came up.

"Better exercise," he sniffed, backing up a bit as J'orj extricated himself from the tangled remains of the wall. "You go under?"

"Yep. Just slid a bit, really. Much easier, less painful. Didn't that fall hurt your back?"

"Nah, back of steel, me." He knocked a fist against his sore back to prove the point, and disguised the wince as a grin.

Diane didn't look convinced, just nodding. "Hmm."

He was about to speak again, when two things distracted him at the same time. One was J'orj, finally free and facing them again, ready to strike. The other was the presence of Kev'n in the room, standing at the entrance of the chamber.

His nose was bleeding. The Doctor knew what it meant.

"Kev'n, don't! We can find another way!"

Completely lost, Diane tugged on his sleeve. "What, what is it?"

A strange sort of serenity in his smile, Kev'n looked to face him. He was using his telepathy completely now, and it was destroying his brain.

_It's all right, Doctor. It's the best way. Think of it as my penance._

"There are other ways for someone like you to pay their debt! This isn't the answer, please, listen to me!"

_Goodbye, Doctor._ He looked to Diane. _Diane… I am so very sorry for what was done to you. Forgiveness might be too much to ask, but… just know that I am sorry._

His face set in determination, he faced J'orj, whose attention was now firmly placed on his fellow Macra.

_Kev'n… what are you doing?_

_What must be done._

A hideous screech filled the Doctor's mind, and he pressed his hands to his head in a futile gesture. Diane was having a slightly worse time with it, both the Nikran field and the lack of mental defences in her head making her more susceptible to the shockwaves of the attack.

J'orj grunted and stumbled back before replying in kind with a similar attack on Kev'n. Both began to falter and waver as the noise intensified; J'orj's shell began to crack, the deep orange becoming pale. Blood trickled from Kev'n's ears now, his face contorted in agony.

Then, suddenly, it stopped, and both collapsed.

Silence descended upon the control room, only the gentle thrum of the pulsating telepathic field quietly doing it's work continued.

The Doctor moved as swiftly as he could to Kev'n, skidding into a kneeling position beside him while Diane quickly followed along.

"It's…" Kev'n sputtered some blood in a cough, took a throaty breath, and started again. "It's all right."

"Why…" The Doctor sighed. "Why did you do that?"

A smile flickered it's way onto Kev'n's face. "Had to be done." His expression became desperate, lost. He looked to Diane, and held up his hand to her.

She stood above him, looking down, unreadable. When she didn't move, the Doctor began to wonder if he knew her at all. Over the course of the day he had known her, he thought he managed to get a fairly good read on her. A good person, maybe a little beaten about by the world, but never broken… but defensive as a result. She certainly wouldn't be the type to handle betrayal well, or to forgive easily.

He decided not to force the issue, instead just watching her.

Diane slowly crouched down, slipping her hand into his. What followed confused and also (he was ashamed to admit) irritated him; they had a telepathic conversation. Whether Diane knew what she was doing or not, he didn't know, but Kev'n certainly did, and he was keeping it private. Was it something he thought the Doctor wouldn't allow? He considered separating them forcibly, but stopped when he saw Diane. Truly _saw _her. She wasn't struggling, wasn't resisting. Whatever was going on… she wanted it.

With a sudden lurch that made the Doctor jump a little inside (he never jumped on the outside - well, almost never), Diane fell onto her back. Kev'n forgotten for the moment, the Doctor moved to her side.

"Diane?"

She stared ahead blankly, eyes on the ceiling. Then, slowly, she blinked.

"Hello, Doctor."

The Doctor got an unpleasant tingling feeling in his stomach. "Diane? Is that you?"

"Of course it's me, don't be ridiculous."

He smiled, offering her a hand and slowly helping her up into a sitting position. "That sounds about right. How are you feeling?"

"Fine. I- oh…"

She was looking at Kev'n. Turning, the Doctor saw the limp body, the empty eyes, still open.

He slowly and quietly went over, closing Kev'n's eyes and putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Thank you."

Diane, still looking a little shaky, knelt on the other side of the body. The Doctor looked her over uncertainly.

"What happened?" he probed, not wanting to sound too insensitive but finding his curiosity hard to ignore. "What did he do?"

Her eyes were misty as she smiled up at him, a joy in her eyes he hadn't seen before.

"He gave me everything."

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(A/N: New pictures of Matt Smith as the Doctor! Looking amazing! With Amy Pond! And another character that I won't spoil for those who haven't seen the pictures!

The future of _Who _is looking good.

Anyway, reviews please. They make me happy.)


	10. Oh, Okay Then

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Chapter Nine: Oh. Okay Then.**_

Hands resting in pockets, the Doctor watched as Diane walked over. Her posture was completely different as she moved. Hands behind her back, she moved with a relaxed manner that seemed completely at odds with the woman he had been bickering back and forth with for the past day or so.

It was amazing what absorbing the knowledge of a Macra could do for your self confidence.

It had been almost a day since they had returned from the Tal'ha via the _Phoenix_. Rom and his men were gone. Apparently the ship had locked them out of the computer as soon as they were teleported onboard; another parting gift from Kev'n. Once Diane was onboard, however, getting back home was child's play. Once there, Mr Icarus' men collected Rom and bundled him off to the main Icarus building, no doubt to be lawyer-ed up to the hilt.

At least, that was what the Doctor had thought yesterday. What he saw on the news bulletin blasting out from the side of a skyscraper went some way to changing his mind.

Mr Rom, in cuffs, being led away for prosecution. The Doctor was glad they didn't have the death sentence here; then he'd actually have to worry about him.

"So?" the Doctor asked, shifting his gaze to the same park he had been wandering through when this whole thing started. "What did he say?"

Diane's smile grew a little, but only slightly. "He's going to do everything he can to help. He's also suspended all of the research projects that had been under Rom's supervision, as well as running some internal investigations into any kind of experimental research."

Bottom lip jutting out a little, the Doctor nodded. "Not bad, not bad."

"Still not going to admit it?"

He didn't look at her, instead gazing up at the false sun hanging in the sky. "Admit what?"

"That you were wrong about Icarus."

"Don't know what you mean."

"Oh, please," she said, sounding every inch the Diane Holmes he had come to know. "You thought he was bad news from the moment you heard his name."

"Not from the _moment_ I heard his name," he said defensively. From Diane's look, he cast his gaze downward, kicking the dirt a little. "It took a good few seconds to process it and _then _I thought he was bad news."

"Mm-hm."

"I'm beginning to see what you mean about that condescending thing, it can get very irritating…"

She shrugged. "Must be Kev'n's influence. Although it was mostly knowledge, I think a few personality traits laced themselves in here."

He looked at her, concerned. "I can take it from you, if you want."

A moment of temptation flickered in her eyes, but then it passed. Diane stared up at the Tal'ha, shaking her head.

"No… Kev'n asked me just before he died if I wanted this. And I said yes. I'm not sure why I did, I just… _knew _it was what I wanted." Content, she took in a deep breath before looking to the Doctor, beaming. "Now I feel even more certain. Everything just seems to… make sense now."

The Doctor nodded, smiling gently. "Good for you."

"And besides, where would you put it? In your head? That place sounds like it's crowded enough already."

"Oh, I was meaning to ask, how's the telepathy?"

"Fine," she said, setting off down the pathway through the park. He joined her at her pace.

"I mean," she continued, "it's the same as it was when I was onboard the Star, but now I just know how to control it better."

"Probably Kev'n again."

Diane nodded, gaze on the ground as they walked. "Probably."

It was an amiable silence as they wandered through the park. To Diane, it probably seemed like an aimless stroll. Of course, he knew exactly where they were headed; the TARDIS was lodged just on the other side of the park, hiding in plain sight beside a particularly green tree.

"I'm going to pass it on," Diane said suddenly, and the Doctor looked at her in surprise.

"Sorry?"

"The telepathic field. When I die, I'm going to pass on to one of the Macra, or some other telepathic species. They need to know in case the Tal'ha ever stops working."

"Not very likely," the Doctor said bluntly. "With the knowledge in your head, you should be able to pass on enough to keep it maintained until the end of time."

He didn't mention that he had been to the end of time, and didn't see a single star in the sky, artificial or otherwise. He took a deep breath as they reached the tree. And there was the TARDIS, welcoming him home.

"Well, Diane, it's been lovely, but I've gotta dash," he said jauntily, pointing a thumb at the TARDIS.

"Is that it? Your ship?" she said, nodding at it incredulously.

"It's not all about big wings and engines, thank you very much. And besides, it's bigger on the inside."

"You're joking."

"I could show you," he invited quietly, backing up to the doors and leaning against the TARDIS frame. "A whole world through these blue doors."

She stared at him. "You want me to come with you?"

He didn't reply for a deafening moment, brown eyes blank. "No," he said simply.

Relief and surprise fought for control of Diane's face. Then came confusion. "Well, good. Because I… well, I don't need to. It's strange… a day ago I would have jumped at the chance to run around the universe with you, never staying in one place, never answering to anyone but myself…"

The Doctor watched her for a moment before speaking. "But…"

"_But… _I have something to live for here now. Something in Kev'n, something I've been feeling ever since I got onboard the Tal'ha. I belong here now." She stopped, and her eyes bounced all over the place like she was just coming to terms with it herself. "_I… _belong here now."

He felt himself grinning, and shot her a wink. "Good for you, Diane Holmes. But, I _don't_ really belong here, so I'd better-"

"Doctor."

"Hm?"

"You should travel with someone."

He grimaced and waved the suggestion away, turning to the TARDIS with key in hand. "Nah, I'm all right, everyone else just slows me down-"

"Doctor."

Key in the door, the Doctor stopped, pressing his head to the door. Achingly slow, he turned around.

"I know. I really do, I just…" He paused, looking back to the TARDIS. "There are too many ghosts in there already. So many people, just… ruined…"

Feeling a weight in his hearts that all the Macra jumping and telepathic fields had managed to distract him from, the Doctor looked at Diane.

"I can't afford to be so selfish anymore." His voice cracked a little. He hated himself for it.

He gathered strength from a deep breath through his nose. "Well, Diane," he said quietly, "thanks for everything. It's been…" he grinned. "Well, it's been brilliant."

"Only because you made it so, Doctor. Thank you. For so much. Just… thank you."

Another familiar look crossed her face, and before he knew it, he was enveloped in a hug. She squeezed him tight, and he tried not to enjoy the contact too much as he embraced her back.

Then they separated.

"Be amazing, Diane." He gave her a wink. "It's simple really; just follow my example."

With that, the Doctor turned, and slid back into the TARDIS, not daring to turn back and look Diane in the face again. They both knew that Kev'n would still be alive if not for him. He had known Kev'n had the cellular re-composition matrix device, and had manipulated Kev'n - and Diane - into using it on him instead. If Kev'n had had the device when he fought J'orj… well, things would have been different. True, he had hoped to avoid Kev'n's telepathic confrontation with J'orj, that the telepathic field would have taken effect on the latter before anything could happen…

He sighed a heavy sigh. "Story of my life…"

The control room thrummed gently, quietly. Welcomingly. He shrugged off his coat and tossed it onto his favourite support strut before wandering absently to the console. Strolling around it, he tapped a button here, twisted a knob there, and swirled a ball thing (he wasn't quite sure what that one was for) before finally moving to the main control lever.

He looked through the observation monitor. Diane was still standing outside.

A pang of curiosity hit him, and the Doctor slammed down the lever, the TARDIS whisking him away.

* * *

Jack Harkness wasn't usually one for the papers. So much ancient drivel, so little time. At least, as far as the high end newspapers went. As far as he was concerned, you could keep your Guardians and Daily Telegraphs (although Ianto would slap him with a rolled up magazine if he said it out loud), he just wanted some trashy, pulpy nonsense. It gave a more accurate look at the culture of the period, he thought.

It was only _slightly _because this would be what the Doctor would read. After spending over a century looking for him and then a few years seeing him sporadically, Jack had tried to stop emulating the Doctor. But sometimes the habits he picked up were good ones. Fighting for the survival of a stranded alien life form; good.

Actually trying on glasses in the mirror to see if they made him look more Doctor-ish; bad.

Although Ianto found it rather interesting.

It was a quiet little café, which wasn't usually how Jack liked his drinking establishments. Then again, he wasn't exactly drinking today; it was noon-ish, and there was a lukewarm cup of coffee sat on the table, wondering what it did wrong. Not to fault the coffee makers, but really, nothing compared to Ianto coffee.

The chair opposite him screeched out, and someone sat down.

"Sorry, that's-"

A skinny man with amazing hair and a sexy grin stared back at him.

"-taken. Uh…" He flipped over his copy of _Heat _embarrassedly, only to reveal the tampon ad on the other side. Jack settled for sliding it under his chair.

"Hi."

"Hello, Jack." The Doctor looked around the café. "Have to say, this doesn't really look like your kind of place."

"And you would know?"

He nodded gravely. "And Rose, too. You may have forgotten from the nine hyper-vodkas, but she and I had a _wonderful _time chasing a drunken and very nude Jack Harkness through the streets of Calhoun Four."

"Oh yeah." He grinned. "I remember wondering the next day where my old pants had gone."

"You don't want to know."

"Still? I've been alive for over a century now, Doc. I've seen a lot. I think I can handle it."

"You…" The Doctor let out a little 'oof' noise, his eyes looking a little haunted. "You really couldn't."

"Coffee?"

"No thanks, makes my hair grow faster."

"Really?"

"Nah, just don't want any."

Jack took a sip of his coffee for something to do, but then grimaced from a) the fact it was cold and b) that it wasn't Ianto's.

"So, Doctor," he said carefully, knowing all too well how quickly the Doctor could shut down a conversation, "what brings you by?"

"Just thought I'd pop in, see how Torchwood was doing…"

"Doc…"

"And you'll never guess who I ran into in the year five billion."

A smirk wormed it's way onto Jack's face. "Was it me?"

"No, it," the Doctor paused for a moment, sparing Jack a glance before continuing, "it wasn't you."

He considered asking about the significance of that look, but Jack decided he didn't really want to know. "So who?"

"Diane Holmes."

"Diane-" His eyebrows shot up. "Really? Wow. The Rift?"

"The Rift."

"Wow."

"That's two wows from Captain Jack Harkness. You must be impressed."

"A double wow," he agreed, grinning. "So, Diane Holmes, huh?

"Yup," he said, popping the 'p'. "She decided to stay there as well. Helping a new species emerge."

"No kidding."

"And she happened to mention Torchwood, and someone called Owen." The Doctor stared at him, but Jack didn't meet his gaze. For some reason unknown to him, he decided to focus on his hands resting on either side of his coffee cup.

"Owen's… not here anymore."

From his silence, Jack assumed the Doctor understood.

"What happened?"

"He… saved Cardiff from a nuclear meltdown."

He dared to glance up at the Doctor, who was nodding contemplatively. "Not a bad way to go."

"I'd rather he hadn't gone at all," he muttered, regretting how much it sounded like he was sniping at the Doctor.

"I know. Sorry."

Jack looked at him. "Are you gonna tell her?"

By way of response, the Doctor cast his gaze out the window and across Cardiff Bay. He pulled on his ear for a moment before checking the clock on the other side of the room.

"You waiting for someone?"

That would be a 'no', then.

"Uh, yeah. Ianto."

"Was he the one in the nice suit?"

Jack grinned. "Figured you'd notice that."

"Well, we might go to the same tailor, I don't know."

Jack smiled.

"Seriously, I don't know. I just found this suit in the wardrobe one day, this could belong to anyone!"

They laughed a little, but it was mostly Jack. The Doctor tapped his fingers on the table, like he was anxious to go.

"So, you and Ianto, are you…"

"Yeah."

The Doctor nodded, clearly not making a judgement one way or the other. Whether that was because he was just happy for Jack or because he didn't care…

"Good, good… well," he announced, springing to his feet, "best be off, eh? I _am _still technically Torchwood's arch-nemesis. Can't be seen sipping coffee with the enemy, can you?"

Jack smiled and toasted him with the coffee mug. He considered inviting the Doctor to stay, but he already knew the answer.

"See ya round, Doc. You ever need help, you know where I am."

The Doctor looked genuinely confused. "When do I need help?"

"Do you really want me to write a list?"

"…nah." He gave his little mock salute, and sauntered out of the café and out of Jack's life once again.

Jack wondered the things he always wondered when he and the Doctor parted ways. Would it be like this, just a random collision, or a big worldwide emergency?

Would he have a new face?

That one always lingered. The idea that the Doctor had died, and he hadn't been there to help him. What was worse was that the Doctor would probably never tell him how it happened, he would just cheerily carry on as if nothing had occurred. But what worried him most was whether or not he would like the new Doctor. What if he was nuts? Or started killing people?

Then Ianto walked in, and everything was pushed aside.

Jack didn't wonder about whether or not the Doctor would tell Diane about Owen. Because, while he would never dare say this to his face, Jack knew the Doctor was quite the coward about his emotions.

As Jack stood and freely embraced his lover, he realised that was one aspect about the Doctor he wasn't keen to emulate at all.

Though he knew he probably would.

* * *

(A/N: I wrote this chapter before _Children of Earth_ came out, so the Jack bit is set between 'Journey's End' and _COE._

Other than that, nothing to add. Reviews, please!)


	11. Epilogue

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**The Hollow Star**_

_**Epilogue**_

The TARDIS wheezed and groaned as it gradually faded from sight, and Diane squinted a bit from the wind that was kicked up. The moisture in her eyes wasn't from the dust.

She wanted him to come back, so she could tell him something, anything. That he wasn't alone, that it was the choice of the person travelling _with _him…

But now she never could.

"I think he'll be all right."

She looked over at the young man standing beside her, hands behind his back. Diane was surprised at how easily he snuck up.

"And how do you know that?" she asked carefully.

He shrugged and smiled, the expression entirely changing his very angular features. They seemed very much at odds with the small bowtie. "Just a feeling."

Something beeped in his tweed jacket, and he pulled out a very familiar looking device. The man (well, boy, really) looked at it a little irritably, as though he wasn't sure why it was there.

He looked to her and smiled again, this time a little more docile and friendly. "Sorry, got to go. The old ball and chain, you know."

A slender hand was shoved out towards her, big fingers waggling. Not quite sure of what to do, she very slowly shook his hand, which made him smile _yet_ _another _smile. A man of many faces, this one.

She looked at his face as he spoke again, this time concentrating on the eyes. They didn't match his features at all. They looked older. Wiser.

"Nice to see you again, Diane Holmes."

His hand slipped from hers, and he strolled off into the park, relaxed and self-assured.

Diane turned back to where the TARDIS had been and smiled. While the eyes had looked older, there _was_ a major difference. They didn't look tired anymore.

She started walking, heading for Mr Icarus' building.

The Doctor still hadn't got the nose right.

* * *

(A/N: I'm not sure where the urge to do this little epilogue came from; it wasn't in the original plans for the story, and I literally added it as I was writing. I didn't want to end on the slightly bitter note of the last chapter, I suppose; I wanted to give some hope that the Doctor's relentlessly angst-y existence will perk up a little bit, even if he _will _have to die again before he gets there.

Which is ironic, because I'm writing another Tenth Doctor story right now which is pretty much the polar opposite of that. Weird, the way the brain works.

Anyway, thanks for all the reviews, folks. It's been a pleasure.

Edit 08/04/10: As with 'Dominoes', I've altered some bits here and there throughout the story to match Ten's attitude towards death as shown in the final specials. This wasn't for some sequel, however, this was just because inconsistent characterisation drives me nuts.

Altering the Doctor's attitude to death put a completely different spin on why he let himself use the telepathic field a second time, even though dying was guaranteed. This actually ended up playing into the themes of the specials even better, so hurray for that. I also moved it timeline-wise so it was set firmly between 'The Next Doctor' and 'Planet of the Dead', again to better fit in with Ten's development through the specials.

Oh, and I changed his shoes from black to white. Always bugged me that I did that the first time round :P)


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